Fast modelling of plasma jet and particle behaviours in spray conditions

International audienceThis paper presents a simplified code allowing to find in a few minutes the trends of the d.c. plasma spray process, at least for a single particle in flight. It is based on a parabolic two dimension (2D) flow for the plasma jet and a three dimension (3D) calculation for the heat and momentum transfer to a single particle. It neglects the carrier gas flow rate- plasma flow interaction but the obtained trends are in good agreement with those obtained with 3D sophisticated codes. However results depend strongly on the turbulence model, the plasma effect corrections chosen for the heat and momentum transfer. Thus, as with 3D codes, the model has to be backed by experiments. It can be used to train operators and let them “see” almost immediately the effects of the different macroscopic spray parameters. The code and the plasma properties used can be freely downloaded