Session Details

Session 9: Aerospace/Defense/Military Zinc Nickel Advancements

Abstract Number:

22

The aerospace industry has long sought a non-toxic replacement ‎for Cadmium plating. This ‎presentation provides a technical ‎analysis of the variables affecting Zinc-Nickel plating's structure.‎

Topics:

Aerospace / Defense / Military

Cadmium plating is a high performance protection layer for ‎steels. It exhibits corrosion protection in extreme environments as ‎well as provides other advantageous properties such as low ‎friction, conductivity, and freedom from voluminous white ‎precipitates. However, Cadmium plating and its traditional ‎hexavalent-chromium-containing post-plate passivation are toxic ‎and banned by many country's environmental laws. Zinc-Nickel, ‎with its Cobalt free passivation treatment, is a high performance, ‎environmentally acceptable alternate to Cadmium plating. Due to ‎risks of hydrogen embrittlement, Zinc-Nickel cannot utilize ‎brighteners and, as such, exhibits a variation in microstructure, ‎visual appearance, and uneven uptake of its passivation ‎treatment. This presentation will provide a summary of the work ‎to understand the variables which contribute to this variation and ‎the results of a full factorial design of experiments (DoE) to ‎characterize their impact. Further, data will be presented on the ‎properties of the output of this DoE including corrosion resistance.‎