Numerical Analysis of the Interactions between Plasma Jet and Powder Particles in PS-PVD Conditions

Plasma spray-physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD) refers to a very low-pressure (~100 Pa) deposition process in which a powder is injected in a high-enthalpy plasma jet, and mostly vaporized and recondensed onto a substrate to form a coating with a specific microstructure (e.g., columnar). A key issue is the selection of the powder particle size that could be evaporated under specific spray conditions. Powder evaporation takes place, first, in the plasma torch between the injection location and nozzle exit and, then, in the deposition chamber from the nozzle exit to the substrate location. This work aims to calculate the size of the particles that can be evaporated in both stages of the process. It deals with an yttria-stabilized zirconia powder and two commercial plasma torches operated at different arc powers with gas mixtures of argon and helium or argon and hydrogen. First, it used computational fluid dynamics simulations to calculate the velocity and temperature fields of the plasma jets under very low-pressure plasma conditions. Then, it estimated the evaporation of the particles injected in both plasma jets assuming an isothermal evaporation process coupled with momentum and heat transfer plasma-particle models in a rarefied plasma. The calculations showed that, for different powers of the Ar–H2 and the Ar–He operating conditions of this study, the heat flux from the plasma jet to particles inside the torch is much higher than that transferred in the deposition chamber while the specific enthalpy transferred to particles is comparable. The argon-helium mixture is more efficient than the argon-hydrogen mixture to evaporate the particles. Particles less than 2 μm in diameter could be fully evaporated in the Ar–He plasma jet while they should be less than 1 µm in diameter in the Ar–H2 plasma jet.