As high-end equipment manufacturing advances, demand for improved surface performance in critical components has increased. Laser cladding is an advanced surface strengthening technique that affords effective surface modification. During the laser cladding process, obtaining a fine grain microstructure usually helps to enhance the microhardness, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance of the cladding layer. However, conventional laser cladding often yields coarse columnar grains that limit further performance improvements, so process optimization to achieve grain refinement is necessary. In this study, oscillating laser cladding was combined with a pulsed-wave (PW) laser mode to deposit a fine-grained Al₂CrFe₂Ni₄Ti_1.5 high-entropy alloy cladding on Q550 steel substrates. Compared with continuous-wave (CW) laser cladding, the PW mode produced markedly refined grains and concomitant improvements in microhardness, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance. Specifically, the microhardness of the PW cladding layer reached approximately 673.34 HV_0.5, the wear volume was approximately 0.06 mm³, the wear rate was approximately 0.21 × 10⁻⁴ mm³/N·m, and the corrosion current density decreased to approximately 1.212 × 10⁻⁵ A·cm⁻². This work presents a novel approach for producing high-performance, wear-resistant, and corrosion-resistant high-entropy alloy cladding layers, and offers both theoretical insight and potential engineering applications.

The breeze vibration duration of conductors is long, the vibration amplitude is strong and the frequency range is wide for electric power transmission lines in strong wind areas, which seriously affects the safe and stable operation of transmission lines. There are two design schemes of conductors which can achieve the purpose of reducing wind-induced disaster. One is enhancing the structural strength of conductors to withstand wind load, but the investment is enormous and the effect is limited. The other is developing drag reduced conductors to reduce wind load by changing conductor structure. This paper started from application feasibility analysis of drag reduced conductors and designed four drag reduced conductors by structure optimization of the conventional aluminium conductor steel reinforced JL/G1A-630/45-45/7, denoted as DFY630/45(45°)-R3.5, DFY630/45(60°)-R3.5, DFY630/45(45°)-R3.2 and DFY630/45(60°)-R3.2, respectively. The wind tunnel test was performed and the wind resistance coefficients in unit length of five conductors were compared. Result showed that the wind resistance coefficients in unit length of four drag reduced conductors were obviously lower than that of the conventional conductor. By controlling the manufacturing process, popularization and application of drag reduced conductors for transmission lines in strong wind areas can be realized.