Development of Refractory Coatings on High Strength, High Conductivity Substrates
Navy STTR FY2010.A


Sol No.: Navy STTR FY2010.A
Topic No.: N10A-T025
Topic Title: Development of Refractory Coatings on High Strength, High Conductivity Substrates
Proposal No.: N10A-025-0001
Firm: H&R Technology, Inc.
179 Bear Hill Road
Waltham, Massachusetts 02451-4300
Contact: Joshua Rabinovich
Phone: (781) 890-5900
Web Site: www.HRTechnology.com
Abstract: The objective of this Project is to explore and develop refractory coatings on high strength, high electrical conductivity copper alloy, to enable damage resistant electromagnetic launcher. An electromagnetic launcher consists of two parallel copper rails, and a moving armature. High electrical currents passing through the rails and armature result in strong magnetic fields, high temperatures, chemical interactions and strong lateral forces on the rails and armature in the launcher bore. The NAVY is looking for a coating technology that can provide improved performance for its EM Railgun rails working at high temperatures and pressures. For this demanding application the main demand for coating technology is the production of metallurgical-bond coating with consistent quality while eliminating of coating dilution, reducing undesirable chemical reactions, and preventing negative metallurgical transformations in the base metal of the rail. These requirements are mutually exclusive for conventional metallurgical-bond fusion processes that require substrate melting during the performance of welding/coating. H&R Technology's LaserForgeT solid-state welding/coating process promises to overcome the above-mentioned limitations of conventional fusion coating processes and permit the production of a strong, metallurgical-bond coating of these highly dissimilar metals while improving performance and service life of electromagnetic launcher.
Benefits: The advanced manufacturing process that can cost-effectively deposit strong, erosion and fatigue resistant coating with metals of extremely different physical characteristics such as Tantalum and Copper will be of great utility to a numerous military and commercial applications. The refractory coating capabilities developed under this program could be applied to military and commercial markets where parts operating under conditions of high heat, stress, and/or current present in high-density power systems. Example applications could be in high current opening and closing switching devices, high-speed maglev contacts, electrical generation facilities, and sections for re-entry protection of spacecraft.

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