Deposition of boron carbide powder by a pulsed high‐current arc plasma

Abstract

SUMMARYA novel high-velocity thermal spraying was experimentally investigated using a pulsed high-current electromagnetically accelerated arc plasma. By spraying boron carbide (B 4 C) powder with a pulsed high-current arc plasma of 10 5 A in a coaxial plasma gun, a dense deposit of crystalline B 4 C with a Vickers hardness of 2600 kgf/mm 2 was obtained on SUS304 substrates. The impact velocity of the sprayed B 4 C particles was thought to be more than 2.5 km/s for powder less than 10 µm in diameter and about 2 km/s for that of 30 ± 10 µm.