Every year, the U.S. Navy spends many billions of dollars in the repair and maintenance of ships, aircraft and land-based vehicles. A significant portion of this money goes to the repair or replacement of worn or eroded components such as shafts, seals, hydraulic cylinders and bearings. Because of continuing budget cuts over the last several years, it has become imperative for the Navy to find ways to reduce this maintenance burden. This need is complicated by the fact that many of the wear surfaces in question are chrome plated, which, due to increasingly stringent environmental regulations, must now be replaced by some other coating technology. As a result, the Office of Naval Research has instituted an initiative to develop and implement new coating technology that takes advantage of the outstanding properties of newly emerging nanostructured materials. Moreover, the coatings are fabricated by thermal spray processing, a mature and widely available technique, and one that is already used for refurbishing worn or otherwise damaged ship and aircraft components. The objective of the program is to establish a coatings capability which can reduce life cycle cost of navy assets either by extending the service lfie of components or making possible the repair, rather than replacement, of the component. The extraordinary properties of these materials make both strategies possible.
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