| Industries like the aerospace, automobile, marine, and other manufacturing sectors require surface modifications on substrates through laser cladding process, because the laser process uses only minimum resources to provide better surface quality compared to conventional processes. As industry's demands have widened, the conventional coating material can no longer satisfy the growing criteria. New technologies have innovated a solution to the coating material through the addition of nanomaterials, which satisfies the growing demands and attains significant improvements in properties. This study reviews the literature about the effects of nanomaterial addition to laser cladding materials. The paper mainly focuses on the effects and factors of nanomaterial addition influencing the microstructure, properties, as well as defect reduction. The review shows that adding nanoparticles to the coating material significantly improves the cladded surface quality and the properties compared to the conventional cladding surface. The cladded surface with nanoparticles has reduced defect formation, increased stable microstructural phase formations and improved mechanical, wear resistance and thermal shock resistance properties. The general factors that influence these improvements are the appropriate selection of nanomaterial addition, uniform dispersion of the nanoparticles, characteristics of the nanoparticles and the quantity of nanoparticles added to the coating material. However, the nanoparticle-added cladding material may also have degraded surface properties. Many studies are investigating various other coating materials using different cladding processes to attain good surface properties and satisfies the demands of industries. |
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