Novel Use of Distribution Facilitators and Time–Temperature Range for Strengthening in Surface Composites on AA7050-T7451

High-strength AA7050-T7451 finds widespread applications in aircraft and aerospace applications. Enhancement of its peak strength is highly useful and extremely challenging. Strengthening due to reinforcement largely depends on homogeneity of distribution. Common distribution approach is to perform multi-pass FSP. Heat input associated with every pass is detrimental to strength. Newer approach for effective distribution and identification of temperature range that is innocuous to T7451 strength is the ideal solution to address this issue. This paper has proposed a maiden and novel approach to add low softening temperature HCP metal powder to the ceramic reinforcement which aids in particle distribution in single FSP pass. The experimental investigation was performed using Taguchi’s L27 orthogonal array. The single-pass FSP demonstrated that in many experiments, the strength of fabricated surface composites surpassed the strength of 7050-T7451. Conditional analysis through a coded MACRO identified the range of temperature and processing time which provides net strengthening in the fabricated surface composites.