Accepted Manuscript

Numerical simulation and experimental study of Ar-H2 DC

atmospheric plasma spraying

Kui Wen, Xuezhang Liu, Min Liu, Kesong Zhou, Hangyu Long,
Chunming Deng, Jie Mao, Xingchen Yan, Hanlin Liao

PII: S0257-8972(19)30424-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surfcoat.2019.04.053
Reference: SCT 24548
To appear in: Surface & Coatings Technology
Received date: 26 August 2018
Revised date: 10 April 2019
Accepted date: 15 April 2019

Please cite this article as: K. Wen, X. Liu, M. Liu, et al., Numerical simulation and
experimental study of Ar-H2 DC atmospheric plasma spraying, Surface & Coatings
Technology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surfcoat.2019.04.053

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journal pertain.
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Numerical simulation and experimental study of Ar-H2 DC

atmospheric plasma spraying

Kui Wena, Xuezhang Liuc, Min Liua,*, Kesong Zhoua,*, Hangyu Longd, Chunming Denga, Jie Maoa, Xingchen
Yana,b, Hanlin Liaob
a
National Engineering Laboratory for Modern Materials Surface Engineering Technology; The Key Lab of
Guangdong for Modern Surface Engineering Technology; Guangdong Institute of New Materials, Guangzhou

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510651, PR China
b
LERMPS, ICB UMR 6303, CNRS, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, UTBM, F-90010 Belfort, France

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c
School of Materials and Mechanical Engineering, Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University,
Nanchang, 330013, PR China
d

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School of Geosciences and Info-physics, Central South University, Changsha 410083, PR China

* Correspondence: liumin@gdas.gd.cn (Min Liu); kszhou2004@163.com(Kesong Zhou)

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Abstract: Thermal plasma spraying technology has been widely used in many industrial

applications, such as gas turbines, energy and semiconductors, etc. However, the relationship
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between the characteristics of plasma arc/jet and spraying parameters is not fully understood yet.

This paper aims to investigate the plasma heat transfer and flow during the plasma spraying
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process by numerical simulation and experimental measurement, and to analyze the effect of
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working current on plasma arc and the corresponding flow fields. To achieve this objective, a three
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dimensional (3D) time-dependent numerical model that includes the inside and outside of the

torch regions was developed, and the Enthalpy probe system was used to diagnose the properties
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of the plasma jet. The results show that the plasma temperature and velocity distributions have

significant 3D asymmetric features. The increase of working current lead to decrease the arc
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length but increase its radius, the effective electric power was increased and resulted in increasing

the plasma temperature and velocity, while the thermal efficiency was reduced. The plasma jet

core with high temperature and velocity was extended both in radial and axial directions.

Additionally, the predicted results were in fair agreement with the measured ones.

Keywords: Plasma spraying; Numerical simulation; Experimental measurement; Plasma arc

length.
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Nomenclature
Variables R radius of anode column curvature
magnetic vector potential r0 radius of anode column
magnetic field rarc radius of arc column
CD drag force coefficient t time
Cp specific heat of plasma gas Tin cooling water temperature at the inlet
Cpw specific heat of cooling water Tout cooling water temperature at the outlet
dL incremental length of anode arc column gas velocity
ds area of the mesh cell at the torch exit u instantaneous velocity
electric field Ucal calculated arc voltage

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Ecal calculated power Uexp experimental arc voltage
Eexp experimental effective power

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GK turbulent generation term Greeks
h plasma specific enthalpy δ stress tensor

I working current intensity
current density
K turbulent kinetic energy
Larc arc column length
mass flow rate of plasma gas
mass flow rate of cooling water
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ε turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate
εr effective net emission coefficient
η thermal efficiency
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θ angle corresponds to the dL
к plasma gas conductivity
μ plasma gas viscosity

P gas pressure μ0 permeability of free space

QEn heat loss into the environment μt turbulent viscosity
QEx measured total energy of plasma ρ plasma gas density
Qj joule heat σ plasma gas electric conductivity
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Qpla electric energy transferred to plasma ϕ electric potential

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1. Introduction
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In plasma spraying, the cold working gas is heated by the electric arc and exit from the anode
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nozzle with high temperature and velocity, which allows the injected powders to be deposited onto

the substrate at high velocity and in a molten or semi-molten state to form coatings. Improving the
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reliability and reproducibility of plasma spraying process are two important goals pursued by

industrial manufacturing. To achieve those goals, it is necessary to better understand the plasma

arc dynamics inside the torch, the characteristics of plasma jet and the behaviors of in-flight

particles, etc.

In the past few decades, a number of online diagnostic tools have been developed for

monitoring and controlling the spraying process. For example, the enthalpy, temperature and

velocity of plasma jet can be determined by the Enthalpy probe [1]. The local gas composition can

be easily obtained by integrating the mass spectrometer, which provides a convenient way to
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analyze the entrainment of the ambient gas [2]. Moreover, some sensor systems, e.g. DPV-2000

and Accuraspray-g3, can be used to measure the in-flight particle temperature, velocity and

diameters [3, 4]. But, up till now, the measurements inside the torch are limited to time-variation

of arc voltage, inner pressure, thermal efficiency and acoustic emission [5]. It is hard to observe

the motion of the plasma arc directly through experimental methods. Therefore, numerical

modeling provides a feasible method for understanding the plasma spraying process and assisting

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in the development of plasma torches.

Because the plasma flow is highly non-linear, exhibits strong property gradients and has a

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wide range of time and length scales, the modeling of the plasma spraying process become an

extremely challenging work [6]. Even so, a large number of numerical results concerning the

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plasma spraying process have been published. Two-dimensional models [7] assumed that the

plasma arc was uniformly attached on the anode inner surface, which leads to obtain unreasonable
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results. Since the beginning of the 21st century, various three-dimensional (3D) numerical models

have been developed to study the asymmetry and transient of the plasma arc inside the torch. One
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of the 3D steady-state model, the arc root determined by the occurrence of numerical instabilities

during the iterative process, was developed by Li et al. in the first place and then the Steenbeck’s
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minimum principle was used to fix the arc position [8]. The minimum entropy production reported
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by Ramachandran et al. [9], and followed by Selvan et al. [10] and Guo et al. [11, 12], has been
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employed to decide the combination of the arc length and core radius under given torch power and

gas flow rate. In addition, if the plasma torch work in steady and takeover mode, the transient
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behavior of plasma arc can be predicted by a reattachment model which set an artificially high

electrical conductivity near the electrodes [13, 14], this method is also adopted in our numerical
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model. While the movement of plasma arc in re-strike mode was well predicted by means of a

special key parameter used to control a new arc attachment generated in an artificial high

temperature or electrical conductivity column [15]. Huang et al. [16] developed an improved LTE

model to analyze the arc behavior, and the corresponding electric conductivity of plasma gas was

determined by nominal electron temperature. In recent years, some models can solve the thermal

and electromagnetic equations simultaneously both solid (cathode or anode) and fluid regions

[17-19]. In this case, the boundary conditions of current density and magnetic potential at the

cathode tip are not required.

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There are two approaches for studying the plasma jet flow outside of the torch (1) for the

case where the plasma jet region is calculated only, the corresponding boundary conditions of

temperature and velocity at the entrance are usually obtained from the experimental measurement

or the pre-calculated result of the plasma arc at the torch exit [20-22] and (2) the plasma arc

heating was simplified by the volume heat source model [23, 24] in which the calculation domain

includes the torch and outside plasma jet regions. The advantage of the latter is that the control

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equations associated with the electromagnetic field can be avoided, but it is necessary to know in

advance the thermal efficiency of the torch under the specific spraying conditions. On the basis of

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the known plasma jet characteristics, the interaction between feed particles and plasma jet was

revealed by numerical simulation, and then the temperature, velocity and trajectory of in-flight

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particles can be predicted [25-29]. In addition, several studies have predicted the splats formation

and associated residual stress evolution in coatings [30], as well as its effect on the failure of
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thermal barrier coatings [31].

The literature review shows that, in most of the previous work, the plasma flow inside and
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outside of the torch were studied separately or a simplified heating method was used to study the

problems associated with plasma jets. A numerical model for predicting the entire plasma flow
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including both inside and outside of the torch regions is still absent. In the present study, torch
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effective power, electro-thermal efficiency, plasma jet temperature and velocity were measured for
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three currents. A 3D transient LTE numerical model was developed to investigate the plasma arc

features and the corresponding plasma flow and heat transfer both inside and outside of the torch.
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Simulations were carried out by the commercial CFD software Ansys-Fluent 14.0 with

user-defined functions in C language. Finally, the predicted results were compared with the
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measured ones.

2. Numerical methodology
2.1 Basic assumptions
In this paper, a mixture gas of Ar and H2 was employed as the plasma forming gas. The

thermodynamic and transport properties of the mixed gas were provided by A. B. Murphy, and the

corresponding calculation methods can be found in the literature [32, 33]. Moreover, the following

assumptions were used for simulating the heat transfer and gas flow involved in plasma spraying:
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1) The plasma jet is a compressible and turbulent flow in LTE state, the plasma forming gas,

ambient gas and carrier gas are the same;

2) Plasma properties of Ar-H2 mixture are functions of the local temperature and pressure,

the effective absorption radius is 1.0 mm for calculating the net emission coefficient

which is reasonable for thermal plasma spraying to consider a self-absorption;

3) The plasma forming gas is injected into the plasma torch in axial direction at the torch

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inlet;

4) Induced electric field is omitted compared to the applied electric field intensity in the

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plasma arc region, which is widely used in DC plasma numerical simulation [18].

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2.2 Control equations

Based on the assumptions mentioned above, the control equations for the present model
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consist of mass, momentum, energy, as well as the electric potential and magnetic vector potential

equations, as follows:
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where these terms , , , and are the pressure work, stress tensor,

electromagnetic force (Lorentz force), joule heat and volumetric radiation loss, respectively. The
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stress tensor can be written as:

Besides foregoing control equations, it is necessary to combine with the following equations

to obtain the electromagnetic field within the plasma torch.

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The standard K-ε two equations turbulence model and wall function method are employed to

simulate the turbulent plasma flow.

where the turbulent viscosity μt=ρCμ(K2/ε), GK=μt(әui/әxj+әuj/әxi)әui/әxj represents the generation

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of turbulence kinetic energy, YM is the contribution of the fluctuating dilatation. The values of

model constant C1ε, C2ε, Cμ, σK and σε are 1.44, 1.92, 0.09, 1.0 and 1.3, respectively.

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2.3 Calculation domain and boundary conditions

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The geometry of simulation corresponds to the F6 plasma torch (GTV GmbH, Luckenbach,

Germany), the length of anode nozzle channel and the exit diameter are 20.0 mm and 6.0 mm
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respectively, as shown in Fig. 1(a). The computational domain includes the inside and outside of

the plasma torch regions (Fig. 1(b)), which is discretized using 465 721 hexahedral cells with 456
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883 nodes. A partial enlarged view of the inside torch region is shown in Fig. 1(c). The powder

injectors, with an inner diameter of 1.5 mm, are located 8.0 mm downstream of the torch exit, the

distance between the torch axis and injector is 12.0 mm, and they are perpendicular to the axial
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direction of the plasma spray torch.

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Fig. 1. (a) Schematic diagram of F6 anode nozzle; (b) geometry and mesh of the computational domain; (c) mesh
of the torch region.

The boundary conditions for different faces applied in this study are listed in Table 1, where
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Qgas and Qcgas represent the mass flow rate of plasma forming gas and powder carrier gas
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respectively, hw=2.0e5 W/m2/K is the convective heat transfer coefficient at the anode surface, and
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Tw=300 K is the reference cooling water temperature, Patm=101 325 Pa is the ambient pressure.
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The temperature and current density imposed on the cathode surface can be approximated by

Gaussian profiles:
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where r is the radial distance from the torch axis, ncath and Jmax are parameters that determine the

shape of the current density and temperature profiles. Rcath is used to make sure that the integration

of current density over the cathode surface equals to the working current, the value of shape

parameters for three cases are given in Table 2. Due to the LTE hypothesis, the current cannot pass

through the plasma-electrode interface. Therefore, a special layer (thickness is about 0.1 mm) with

artificially high electrical conductivity (1.0e4 S/m) is set immediately adjacent to the electrodes,
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which allows a new arc reattachment formed whenever the arc fringe gets contact or close enough

to the anode surface.

Table 1. Boundary conditions of the numerical model

Boundary P T

Inlet 300 (K)

Anode
Cathode

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Torch wall 1000 (K)

Outlet 300 (K)

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Injector wall 500 (K)

Injector inlet 300 (K)

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Note: n represents the unit vector.

Table 2 Shape parameters of current density profiles

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Current (A) (A/m2)
450 2.125e8 4 0.847686
550 2.375e8 4 0.883918
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650 2.625e8 4 0.911877

3. Equipments and spraying parameters

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The experimental measurements were carried out on the F6 plasma spraying facility, and the
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plasma torch was fixed on the 6-degree of freedom robot. Detailed spraying parameters were
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listed in Table 3. The arc voltage and water temperatures were read from the console window of

the spraying system, which measured at the inlet and outlet of the power cables. Enthalpy Probe
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System (Tekna Plasma Systems Inc., Canada), the orifice area of probe tip was 1.368 mm2, was

employed to measure the plasma jet temperature and velocity. The closest measurement distance
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from the nozzle exit was set at 60 mm to avoid thermal overload of the probe tip. During the

measurement, the axis of the probe always kept coincident with the axis of the plasma torch.
Table 3 Spraying conditions
Current (A) Ar (slpm) H2 (slpm)
Case 1 450 40 10
Case 2 550 40 10
Case 3 650 40 10
Note: slpm represents standard liter per minute.

4. Results and discussions

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4.1 Plasma arc features

The instantaneous distributions of electric current density inside the plasma torch operated

with 450, 550 and 650 A are shown in Fig. 2. Two representative black isolines were marked for

more clearly illustrating the effect of the working current in the plasma arc features, the

corresponding values are 3.0e7 A/m2 and 4.0e7 A/m2, respectively. It can be observed that

although the plasma arc shows distinct transient characteristics, the axial length of the plasma arc

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(arc length) operating at a certain current was comparable for different times. In addition, the arc

length decreased with the increase of current, some previously published literature of numerical

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predictions [9, 11] and experimental measurements [34] have reported the similar results.

However, some numerical models based on the minimum entropy production reported the

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opposite results, that the arc length increased with increasing current [10].
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Fig. 2 Instantaneous distributions of electric current density inside the plasma torch for different cases: (a) 450 A,
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(b) 550 A, (c) 650 A.

In this study, results of the arc length can be explained by the interaction between the Lorentz
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force and gas drag force. In general, the balance force acting on the incremental length of

anode column can be expressed by the following equation [34]:

where the minus sign in the first term indicates that the Lorentz force (FL) acts in the opposite

direction of the drag force (FD). There is an equilibrium situation in the axial direction which the

values of FL and FD are equal. The special parameters R, r0, θ and CD for anode column can be

approximated as constants due to negligible change in the simulation. When increasing the

working current, the square power of the current density in the Eq.14 will cause a considerable
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increase in the Lorentz force, resulting in a resultant force pointing in the upstream direction. In

addition, the increased plasma velocity resulting from the increased current, see Section 3.2, leads

to increase the anode column curvature, especially in the vicinity of the anode wall. Under the

combined action of the increased resultant force and anode column curvature, the arc root

attachment was finally forced to move upstream.

Furthermore, this fact can also be illustrated through an expression that is based on the

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experimental data [34].

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where the Vgas is the velocity of incoming cold gas superimposed on the anode column, it can be

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roughly assumed as a constant due to the total gas flow rate was fixed at 50 slpm. The plasma

temperature inside the torch increased with increasing the current, which will be discussed in
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detail in the following parts. It is well known that the temperature rise corresponds to a decrease in

gas density. Therefore, for Eq. 15, increasing the current not only increases the value of the
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denominator, but also decreases the value of the numerator ( ) by reducing the plasma gas

density. Consequently, the length of plasma arc was decreased.

Besides the arc length, it can also be clearly seen that the radius of arc column increases with
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the increase of working current. This fact can be described by the following equation [34]:
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here, C, m, n and p are the arbitrary constants that need to be determined experimentally.
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Irrespective the specific value of these constants, similar to the previous analysis of the arc length,

the value of Vgas can be approximated as a constant. Therefore, as increasing the working current,
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the term in Eq. 16 is increased, while the is decreased. As a result, the radius of the

arc column was broadened, this results are also supported by some published numerical results [9].

4.2 Plasma flow inside the torch

Plasma temperature and velocity fields inside the troch at a representative time are depicted

in Fig. 3 for different working currents. It can be seen that even if the structure of the plasma torch

is axisymmetric, the temperature and velocity fields exhibited asymmetric characteristics. This is

mainly attributed to the fact that the anode arc attached at a particular location on the anode

surface, as shown in Fig. 2. When the cold plasma forming gas passes through the anode column,
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it will experience a strong heating and acceleration process, thus causing the temperature and

velocity at the local area (anode column) increased rapidly, see the arrows in Fig. 3.

Under the fixed inlet gas flow rate, the maximum temperature was increased from 32 000 K

to 40 000 K when the current rises from 450 A to 650 A. In order to more clearly show the effect

of increasing current on plasma temperature changes, the temperature distributions in front of the

cathode were re-plotted with a temperature scale of 300-32000. As observed in Fig. 4, the region

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area of the plasma temperature to values above 29 464 K was increased with increasing the current.

This fact can be well explained by the generated Joule heat, in principle, it is the product of

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current density and electrical field strength, namely:

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Looking back at Fig. 2, besides increasing the arc radius and reducing the arc length, the
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increment of current leads to increase the current density in front of the cathode. Apparently, the

region area with a current density larger than 2.0e8 A/m2 increases with increasing the current.
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Even though the electric conductivity of Ar-H2 mixture gas increases slowly as the temperature

increases, the square power of the current density in Eq. 17 leading to the Joule heating increased

rapidly. The final consequence is that the plasma temperature increases with increasing the
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current.
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As shown in Fig. 3(b), the maximum plasma velocity inside the torch were about 2 700, 3
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200 and 3 700 m/s for currents of 450, 550 and 650 A, respectively. There are two primary causes
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for this fact. Firstly, the increased plasma temperature resulting from the increased working

current leads to reduce the gas density, which enhances the expansion effect of the plasma.
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Therefore, the velocity was rapidly increased due to the limited space of the plasma torch.

Secondly, the increase of cathode jet velocity that superimposing axial plasma flow also plays a

positive role in increasing the overall velocity, it can be indicated by the Maecker effect [35]:

where umax is the maximum velocity that the cathode jet may reach under a certain working current

condition. In the case of increasing the working current, the plasma density in front of the cathode

is decreased, and hence the umax was undoubtedly increased which will result in a further increase

in the plasma velocity.

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Fig. 3 Plasma temperature (left) and velocity (right) distributions inside the torch. (a) 450 A, (b) 550 A, (c) 650 A.
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Fig. 4 Plasma temperature distributions in front of the cathode. (a) 450 A, (b) 550 A, (c) 650 A.

In general, a portion of the electric power used as input of the plasma torch was transferred to
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the plasma arc (effective power, Eexp), and the rest was lost to the cooling water. The energy

balance for the torch can be written as follows:

the first term on the right hand side of Eq. 19 is the electric power, and the second term presents

the energy carried away by the cooling water. Whereas, for numerical simulation, the energy (Ecal)

of the plasma leaving the torch can be obtained by integrating the plasma enthalpy at the surface of

the torch exit, namely:

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For experiments and simulations, the electrothermal efficiency was calculated by dividing the

energy transferred to the plasma gas by the electric power, and the relation was given in Eq. 21.

The comparison between the values of effective power and thermal efficiency obtained from

measurements and numerical predictions are shown in Fig. 5. It can be clearly seen that the electric

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power increased with increasing the working current, while the corresponding thermal efficiency

was reduced. Both effective power and thermal efficiency, the values of predictions were less than

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that of measurements. As described in Section 3, the arc voltage and temperature of cooling water

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were measured at the inlet and outlet of the power cables. In this case, when the hot water flows

through the power cable, the energy taken away by the cooling water was underestimated due to a
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part of heat dissipated into the environment (QEn). Which indicates the total energy value of plasma

gas deduced from measured data (QEx) includes both the energy transferred to the plasma (Qpla)
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and the part of heat loss into the environment, namely QEx = Qpla + QEn, and thus the effective

power and thermal efficiency was overestimated. If the effect of this part was deducted, the
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predicted value should be closer to experimental value. Additionally, the variation tendencies of the
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predicted effective power and efficiency were similar to that of measured ones.
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Fig. 5 Effects of working current on the effective power and thermal efficiency

Figure 6 shows the effect of working current on the plasma temperature and velocity profiles

at the torch exit. The increase of current is responsible for the increase of the plasma temperature

and velocity. When the current rises from 450 A to 650 A, the maximum temperature has not risen

significantly (about 600 K). This fact may be caused by two reasons. First, even if the increased
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current results in an effective power increase, the thermal efficiency was decreased because more

electrical energy was dissipated into the cooling water. Second, the specific enthalpy of Ar-H2

mixture gas increases rapidly with increasing temperature when the temperature exceeds 12 000 K,

as shown in Fig. 7. As the temperature increasing from 13 000 K to 13 500 K, the corresponding

values of enthalpy increase from 26.895 MJ/kg to 32.013 MJ/kg, i. e. more electrical energy input

is needed. In addition, compared with the plasma temperature, the current changes have a greater

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effect on the plasma velocity.

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Fig. 6 The profiles of average plasma temperature (a) and velocity (b) at the torch exit (X axis).
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Fig. 7 Enthalpy of plasma forming gas (Ar/H2, 40/10 slpm)

In order to more intuitively compare the effect of current on the plasma characteristics at the

torch exit, the plasma temperature and velocity distributions were plotted in the ranges of 300 - 14

000 K and 0 - 1 900 m/s scales, respectively. Even though the maximum temperature increased by

300 K per 100 A, the area of the high temperature core (> 12 904 K) was significantly increased, as

shown in Fig. 8(a). This fact implies that the increment in working current makes the plasma jet to

leave the torch with a larger diameter of hot core. Meanwhile, the plasma velocity (Fig. 8(b)) has

the similar variation tendency. According to Fig. 6 and 8, it can be concluded that increasing the
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working current not only increases the values of plasma temperature and velocity at the torch exit,

but also increases the corresponding diameter of region area.

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Fig. 8 Distributions of plasma temperature (a) and velocity (b) at the torch exit
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4.3 Plasma jet flow outside the torch

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During the measurement, we found that the probe tip is at great risk of damage due to thermal
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overload within 60 mm. Therefore, the measurement data collected in this experiment started at 60

mm. The dependence of axial plasma jet characteristics of simulation and measurement on the
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spraying distance from the torch exit is shown in Fig. 9. Both plasma temperature (Fig. 9(a)) and

velocity (Fig. 9b) were increasing with current over the whole range due to the large amount of
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input electric power, which affects the profiles distribution of plasma properties at the torch exit.

Moreover, it can be observed that the profiles of plasma temperature and velocity shows an

inflection point in the range of 0.03 - 0.04 m. Before this inflection point, these profiles have a

sharp downward tendency. The reason for this fact is mainly caused by two important stages. The

first is that the plasma jet undergone an expansion process once it ejected from the torch due to the

absence of constrained effect. The second is attributed to the entrainment of cold ambient air,

because the significant increase in the content of entrained cold air resulted from the fluctuated

plasma jet leads to a drastically decrease in plasma temperature and velocity [2]. The local
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enlarged picture of velocity vector in the white rectangle (Fig. 10(a)) is shown in Fig. 10(b). These

arrows pointing opposite to the flow of the plasma jet indicate that an eddy roll-up formed, which

shows a clear evidence of the cold ambient air entrained into the plasma jet. In addition, the

temperature at the inflection point was about 4 500 K, and the corresponding axial position for

three currents marked with symbol IFT450, IFT550 and IFT650, as shown in Fig. 9(a). It is found that

the values of these symbols satisfy the relationship IFT450 < IFT550 < IFT650. In other words, the

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axial position of inflection point moves downstream with increasing the working current.

Moreover, plasma velocity has the similar variation tendency to the temperature along the increase

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current (IFV450 < IFV550 < IFV650). These facts revealed that the increase of working current

resulted in extending the axial length of high temperature and velocity core regions.

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It is worth mentioning that the predicted results are the value of the grid node on the torch

axis, while the experimental data are the average value depending on the orifice area of Enthalpy
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probe tip. By comparing the predicted results to the measured ones, the plasma temperatures of

predictions were slightly lower than that of measurements, while the corresponding velocities
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were more comparable. For plasma temperatures and velocities, the difference between the

measured data and calculated curve decreases as the spraying distance increases, indicating that
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the average characteristic of the measured data was gradually weakened by the mixing of the
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plasma jet with the cold ambient gas. Regardless of the temperature and velocity of the plasma jet
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rise with the increase of the current, or decrease with the increase of the spraying distance, these

variation tendencies of numerical simulation are in good agreement with that of experimental
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measurement.
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Fig. 9 Comparison between predictions and measurements of the plasma jet temperature (a) and velocity (b) for
different working currents.

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Fig. 10 Contours of velocity field distribution (a) and the corresponding velocity vector (b) in the white rectangle.

Radial profiles of the plasma jet temperature and velocity for numerical simulation and
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experimental measurement, at 60 mm distance from nozzle exit, are shown in Fig. 11. Both
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numerical and experimental results show that increasing the working current can obtain a plasma
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jet with higher temperature and larger velocity. However, the profiles of measurements seem to

deviate from the normal distribution, which may be caused by insufficient measured data. In this
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experiment, the plasma jet at 60 mm has a diameter of about 12 mm, and 2.0 mm was set to the

measured step size based on the 1.5 mm orifice diameter of the probe tip. Similar to the analysis of
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axial distributions, the radial locations with the same plasma temperature and velocity are denoted

by RT and RV, respectively. For example, symbols RT450, RT550 and RT650 represent the radial

position of the three working current conditions, as shown in figure 11(a). It can be clearly seen

that as the current increases, those locations are away from the center of the axis. This fact implies

that the diameter of the plasma jet core with the same isothermal surface increases gradually.

Base on the discussion of Fig. 9 and 11, it is reasonable to conclude that increasing the

working current not only prolonged the core of plasma jet which with high temperature and

velocity, but also extended the radial dimension of the core. Therefore, the increase in the plasma
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jet core region means that more in-flight particles will be better heated and accelerated, which

finally increases the deposition efficiency and may also the coating quality. Those phenomena

were consistent with the actual production process.

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Fig. 11 Comparison between predicted and experimental radial profiles (X-axis) of the plasma jet temperature (a)
and velocity (b) at the 60 mm spraying distance.
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5. Conclusions
In this paper, a 3D time-dependent numerical model has been developed to predict the plasma
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arc features, the corresponding plasma flow and heat transfer inside and outside of the torch. The

distribution of plasma jet characteristics in the axial and radial directions was measured by the
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Enthalpy probe system. Predicted results show that the length of the plasma arc decreased with
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increasing working current, while the radius of the arc increased. Both measured and predicted
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results revealed the fact that as the current increased, the effective electric power was increased

which lead to an increase in the plasma temperature and velocity. However, the thermal efficiency
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was reduced because more energy taken away by cooling water. Also, plasma jet core with high

temperature and velocity was extended both in radial and axial directions. The results of numerical
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simulations were in good agreement with that of the experimental measurements.

Acknowledgments: The authors sincerely acknowledge the database of thermo-physical

properties of the plasma gases from Dr. A.B. Murphy (CSIRO, Australia), and the financially

supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51771059), Guangdong Natural

Science Foundation (No. 2016A030312015), Guangdong Academy of Science Program (No.

2018GDASCX-0951, 2018GDASCX-0402, 2018GDASCX-0950, 2017GDASCX-0111) and

Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong (No.2017A070701027,

2014B070705007).
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Highlights

1. A 3D time-dependent LTE numerical model was developed to predict

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the plasma arc features, the corresponding plasma flow and heat

transfer inside and outside of the plasma torch.

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2. The length of the plasma arc decreased with increasing working

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current, but the radius of the arc was increased.
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3. As the current increased, the effective electric power was increased

which lead to an increase in the plasma temperature and velocity,

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while the thermal efficiency was reduced. Plasma jet core with high

temperature and velocity was extended both in radial and axial

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directions.
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