ON THE APPLICATION OF PLASMA PULSES GENERATED BY ELECTROMAGNETIC AND ELECTROTHERMAL LAUNCHERS FOR SURFACE-TREATMENT

At the Lehrstuhl fur Raumfahrttechnik (LRT) of the Technical Universit y of Munich (TUM) various types of electrothermal and electromagnetic launchers have been developed to simulate micrometeoroid and space deb ris impacts, The flow of hot and dense high-velocity plasma generated in these launchers has been used to accelerate small glass beads, The targets have been; shielded from the plasma in prior work. This paper presents the application of these plasma pulse accelerators to investi gate the direct influence of the fast, high density plasma on material surfaces, The plasma has been supplemented with different materials t o achieve coatings with specific properties, Relations involving chang es in material properties have been investigated. Electromagnetic and electrothermal launchers can be used to generate short high-energy pla sma pulses, The interaction of such plasma pulses with metallic surfac es generates very hard surface layers, which are very resistant to fri ction corrosion.