Particle Size Distribution of the Filling Powder in Cored Wires: Its Effect on Arc Behavior, In-Flight Particle Behavior, and Splat Formation

Abstract

The filling powder, as a part of the feedstock in cored wires, directly influences the particle formation, in-flight particle behavior, the coating microstructure, and consequently the behavior of the desired coating, produced by twin wire arc spraying (TWAS). In this work, the effect of the particle size distribution of the filling powder in cored wires was studied. The process parameters were changed for different intervals of particle size distributions. Arc fluctuations were measured and found to be higher at smaller particle sizes. The in-flight particles showed a higher velocity when powders with smaller grain sizes were used and higher particle temperature when bigger grain sizes were used. The splats tended to form a regular disk shape in the case of smaller grain sizes. This investigation studied the important effect of using cored wires and the filling powders grain sizes on the TWAS process.