The Principle Hugoniot of Kinetic and Plasma Sprayed Refractory Metallic Deposits up to 10 GPa

Controlled Atmosphere Plasma Spray (CAPS) and Cold Spray (CS) are coating processes which produce deposits with porous, stochastic microstructures containing many interfaces due to imperfect layering of feedstock particles upon impact. The two processes create vastly different microstructures and densities for the same materials. We conducted gas gun experiments to measure the principal Hugoniot of tantalum, niobium, and Ta/Nb blended films fabricated by both techniques in the range of 1-10 GPa. The reverse-ballistic configuration was used to impact kinetic and plasma sprayed samples into witness windows with known shock Hugoniots (PMMA, LiF, and sapphire). A velocity interferometer (VISAR) measured the particle velocity at the impactor-witness interface. Material responses were compared for the low- and high- density deposits formed by CAPS and CS, respectively.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.