Surface Navy 2024: US Navy looks to accelerate cold spray applications

Cold spray process applies powdered metal at a highly accelerated velocity – the speed of sound or faster – on a surface using an applicator and nozzle quickly and effectively. (Janes)

The US Navy (USN) is seeking to expand its use of cold spray technology to repair and maintain its platforms and improve fleet readiness, Dan Stanley of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) engineering directorate technology branch told Janes .

“We've made some good headway with cold spray in the navy,” Stanley told Janes during interview in advance of the Surface Navy Association (SNA) National Symposium 2024, which started on 9 January

“We're keeping up that momentum,” he said. “We've been very aggressive to leverage real world opportunities to show where cold spray is advantageous. We've not been as risk adverse. We've been assessing the technical risk in opportunities to show in the real world what cold spray can do.”

After showing how cold spray technology can save time and money on repairs and maintenance with popup cells, shipboard repairs, and expeditionary operations, the USN is looking not only to expand those types of uses, but the service is also continuing to develop different kinds of cold spray powders to broaden the kind of repairs the technology can be used for especially to address wear and corrosion issues.

“Cold spray gives us a chance to reuse parts we were scrapping,” Stanley noted. “It helps with the material readiness of the fleet. The navy is leaning hard into cold spray.”