Surface Modification Technologies for Aerospace and Engineering Applications: Current Trends, Challenges and Future Prospects.

In recent years, surface engineering has acquired a greater importance in the field of materials technology, particularly in aerospace, automotive, bio-medical and engineering applications. Surface engineering enables enhancing the performance of the materials at an affordable cost to induce functional properties, which otherwise cannot be provided by the substrate material. The degradation of materials properties due to wear and corrosion is estimated to be very high. Since surface engineering can increase the performance of the given materials at a reduced cost, it has enormous potential for providing technological solutions to various engineering problems. Conventionally, several wet-chemical and spray-based processes have been used for the surface modification of engineering materials. These include: electroplating, electroless plating, anodization and various other electrochemical processes, and organic paint coatings. However, environmental issues demand the development of cost-effective eco-friendly surface modification processes. Towards this, in recent times, a lot of superior process techniques such as: chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition, thermal spray, diffusion processes, sol–gel, etc. have been developed. In spite of this, there is still great scope for research in establishing a relationship between the process parameters of the used surface engineering processes and the resulting properties of the modified surface. Further, recent developments in surface engineering using nanostructured coatings/nano-surfaces are expected to carve a niche in many industrial applications. Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to fill the gaps between the research done at the lab level and the plethora of problems faced by the industry. In this article, some of these issues will be addressed with emphasis to the aerospace, automotive and engineering sectors. A glimpse of futuristic surface modification technologies will also be presented, in brief, which will enable in providing cost-effective solutions to a variety of industrial problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]