Particle deposition on a rotating disk in application to vapor deposition process (VAD)

Abstract

Vapor Axial Deposition (VAD), one of optical fiber preform fabrication processes, is performed by deposition of submicron-size silica particles that are synthesized by combustion of raw chemical materials. In this study, flow field is assumed to be a forced uniform flow perpendicularly impinging on a rotating disk. Similarity solutions obtained in our previous study are utilized to solve the particle transport equation. The particles are approximated to be in a polydisperse state that satisfies a lognormal size distribution. A moment model is used in order to predict distributions of particle number density and size simultaneously. Deposition of the particles on the disk is examined considering convection, Brownian diffusion, thermophoresis, and coagulation with variations of the forced flow velocity and the disk rotating velocity. The deposition rate and the efficiency directly increase as the flow velocity increases, resulting from that the increase of the forced flow velocity causes thinner thermal and diffusion boundary layer thicknesses and thus causes the increase of thermophoretic drift and Brownian diffusion of the particles toward the disk. However, the increase of the disk rotating speed does not result in the direct increase of the deposition rate and the deposition efficiency. Slower flow velocity causes extension of the time scale for coagulation and thus yields larger mean particle size and its geometric standard deviation at the deposition surface. In the case of coagulation starting farther from the deposition surface, coagulation effects increases, resulting in the increase of the particle size and the decrease of the deposition rate at the surface.