Influence of plasma and cold spray deposited Ti Layers on high-cycle fatigue properties of Ti6Al4V substrates

In order to understand the positive effect of the grit-blasting procedure and the adverse effect of the coatings deposition on fatigue lives, chemical analyses, fractographic analysis, microstructural investigations as well as layers elastic moduli estimation were carried out. It was found that the cold spray deposition retained the composition of the powder feedstock while a complete transformation of Ti into nitrides and oxides was detected in the plasma deposited layers. Owing to the different coating build-up principles and their respective different porosity levels, the moduli of the coatings were found to vary (7.2 GPa for plasma sprayed and 36.7 GPa for cold sprayed layers). The fatigue crack initiation sites and propagation directions in the plasma and cold sprayed specimens were found to differ substantially. Based on the obtained results, two explanations of the fatigue loading results are suggested in the paper.