CuCrZr alloys exhibit excellent properties, including high electrical and thermal conductivity, making them the preferred material for critical electrical conduction and heat dissipation components in extreme environments. To address the low hardness and inadequate wear resistance of copper alloys, an 8wt.% TiC/Ti-6Al-4 V coating was manufactured on CuCrZr alloys via laser powder direct energy deposition (LP-DED). A Gaussian process regression (GPR) model based on Bayesian optimisation precisely constructed an optimisation model linking laser power (p), scanning speed (v), and shear strength. The optimal parameters (p = 1510 W, v = 150 mm/min) for maximum shear strength was obtained and the maximum shear strength reached 91.7 ± 2.7 MPa, consistent with the experimental results. Microstructural analysis showed a graded structure of (TiC/Ti-6Al-4 V)/Cu-Ti transition layer/CuCrZr, which was uniformly distributed with the eutectic and dendritic TiC in (TiC/Ti-6Al-4 V) coating and Cu-Ti transition layer. The electrical conductivity of the coating is retained ∼90% of the substrate, the microhardness was increased by ∼570% due to TiC and Cu-Ti intermetallic compounds (IMCs), and the wear resistance was improved by ∼43%. The wear mechanism changed from the adhesive-fatigue wear to the abrasive wear. This work demonstrates a machine learning (ML) assisted strategy for fabricating high-wear-resistance conductive coatings on CuCrZr alloys.
Huang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.