Abstract
Due to their outstanding stiffness-to-weight ratio, fiber-reinforced plastics are established materials for weight reduction in the aerospace and automotive industries. To improve certain properties, such as their low thermal and electrical conductivity, metallic coatings can be applied to the polymer surface. One of the methods used for this purpose is thermal spraying. Studies have shown that the adhesion strength of metallic coatings on polymer surfaces is low. To improve the adhesion strength, the surface of the fiber-reinforced plastics was pretreated with pulsed laser-based methods. This study describes in detail the process chain, the resulting surface conditions and their effect on the adhesion strength of wire arc sprayed copper coatings in pull-off and shear tensile testing. The results show up to ~200% increase in adhesion strength for the laser-structured samples compared to the grit-blasted reference samples in the pull-off test.
Highlights
Fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP), especially carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP), are used for a wide range of advanced technical structures [1]
In order to achieve a wide range of applications, research must still overcome some key challenges related to advanced FRP
The substrate material used in this study was a thermoset CFRP
Summary
Fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP), especially carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP), are used for a wide range of advanced technical structures [1]. Due to their high specific stiffness and strength, FRPs are ideal for the substitution of some metallic materials and reducing the weight of components [1]. The use of FRP is limited by their physical properties and tribological behavior, including their low wear resistance [2] and insufficient thermal [3] and electrical conductivity [4] Some of these constraints can be solved by surface metallization. Heckert and Zaeh applied two different laser structures to an aluminum part and joined it with an FRP thermoplastic by laser radiation
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