Cold Spray Fabrication of Refractory Materials for Gun Barrel Liner Applications

The use of refractory materials is currently being developed for gun barrel coatings and liners. Explosive cladding has been shown to be a successful method for bonding liners into 25-mm M242 Bushmaster barrels. The process relies on commercially available tube products that serve as the liner materials, which are often difficult to manufacture. Cold spray is a novel process used to consolidate metal powders into both thin coatings and large bulk materials that is being investigated as a cost effective alternative to conventional processing techniques. This work examines the use of cold spray as it pertains to the consolidation of Ta donor tubes for explosively bonded gun liners. Ta tubes were consolidated and annealed to increase the ductility of the material from 0.2% strain to 35% strain as determined by tensile testing. Ta donor tube was successfully explosively clad to 25 mm gun barrel forging. Bond strength testing results of explosively clad cold spray tube were found to be comparable to commercially obtained liners. Notes This article not subject to U.S. copyright law.