A comprehensive model is developed to study the heating, melting, evaporation, and resolidification of powder particles in plasma flames. The well-established LAVA code for plasma flame simulation is used to predict the plasma gas field under given power conditions, and provide inputs to the particle model. The particle is assumed to be a spherical and one-dimensional heat conduction equation with phase change within the particle is solved numerically using an appropriate coordinate transformation and finite difference method. Melting, vaporization, and resolidification interfaces are tracked and the particle vaporization is accounted for by the mass diffusion of vapor through the boundary layer around the particle. The effect of mass transfer on convective heat transfer is also included. Calculations have been carried out for a single particle injected into an Ar–H2 plasma jet. Zirconia and nickel are selected as solid particles because of their widespread industrial applications as well as significant differences in their thermal properties. Numerical results show strong nonisothermal effect of heating, especially for materials with low thermal conductivity, such as zirconia. The model also predicts strong evaporation of the material at high temperatures.
In this article, amorphous and nanocomposite thermally deposited steel coatings have been formed by using both plasma and high-velocity oxy-fuel (HVOF) spraying techniques. This was accomplished by developing a specialized iron-based composition with a low critical cooling rate (Ϸ10 4 K/s) for metallic glass formation, processing the alloy by inert gas atomization to form micron-sized amorphous spherical powders, and then spraying the classified powder to form coatings. A primarily amorphous structure was formed in the as-sprayed coatings, independent of coating thickness. After a heat treatment above the crystallization temperature (568 ЊC), the structure of the coatings self-assembled (i.e., devitrified) into a multiphase nanocomposite microstructure with 75 to 125 nm grains containing a distribution of 20 nm second-phase grain-boundary precipitates. Vickers microhardness testing revealed that the amorphous coatings were very hard (10.2 to 10.7 GPa), with further increases in hardness after devitrification (11.4 to 12.8 GPa). The wear characteristics of the amorphous and nanocomposite coatings were determined using both two-body pin-on-disk and three-body rubber wheel wet-slurry sand tests. The results indicate that the amorphous and nanocomposite steel coatings are candidates for a wide variety of wear-resistant applications.
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