Computational Evaluation of Thermal Barrier Coating Characteristics Under Plasma Spraying

Abstract

Abstract To enhance the efficiency of computational experiment covering all links of a technological chain ‘generation of plasma jet – injection of particles – formation of dust-laden plasma jet – coating deposition from drops of a melt’ it is very attractive to integrate the experimentally tested analytical solutions characterizing splats formation along with 2-D/3-D models describing dust-laden technological flow. The authors of the present paper carried out a computer simulation of a plasma spraying process from zirconia particles injection to a coating formation conducted by integrating particle-laden plasma flow, metal oxide splat formation and coating formation models with reference to the thermal barriers. The velocity and temperature of both plasma flow and zirconia particles under an applied RF electromagnetic field were clarified by using the first model. Radial distributions of particle impact location, velocity and temperature were obtained based on both an unsteady effect of a plasma flow and distributions of particle size and injection velocity. Secondly, splat thickness and diameter after zirconia droplets impact onto substrate were clarified by using the earlier experimentally probated analytical solution. Finally, the coating thickness distributions were evaluated by using the last model. Abstract only; no full-text paper available.