Study on the influence of metal phase transition on transport coefficient calculation of gas–metal plasma mixtures

Abstract

In most industrial applications, plasma has an important feature that the erosion products produced by plasma will undergo a phase transition and affect the properties of plasma mixtures. Calculating the transport coefficients of the plasma mixtures, usually, gas–metal mixtures, is an important approach to study this feature. However, most transport coefficient calculation methods have some difficulties in dealing with the solid and liquid components of gas–metal plasma mixtures. In this study, a modified method for calculating transport coefficients of gas–metal plasma mixtures containing solid and liquid status is proposed, considering that the liquid and solid components are usually in the form of clusters. Based on this modified method, the influence of the metal phase transition on the transport coefficients of gas–metal plasma mixture is explored with the example of H2–Cu plasma mixture. The findings revealed in this study are as follows: (1) The modified calculation method is applicable for not only gas–metal plasma mixtures but also other plasma mixtures containing solid and liquid status. (2) Ignoring the metal phase transition in the calculation of transport coefficients of gas–metal plasma mixtures will inevitably produce considerable variances. (3) The variances, caused by ignoring the metal phase transition, are tightly associated with the pressure, the proportion of metal, and the unbalanced degree of gas–metal plasma mixtures. In summary, the variances caused by ignoring the metal phase transition might be ignorable only when the pressure, proportion of metal, and unbalanced degree of gas–metal plasma mixture are all in extremely small values.