Abstract
Thermal spray is a melt-spray process in which material is melted and accelerated to high velocities, impinges upon a substrate, and rapidly solidifies to form a coating. Modeling the deposition dynamics of droplets is a key step towards understanding the evolution of a coating microstructure, since a coating is built up from the successive accumulation of many deformed, solidified droplets. This paper discusses some special effects testing of a particle model being developed by the authors to simulate the mechanics and thermodynamics associated with the simultaneous flattening and solidification of a fully liquid or partially solidified droplet. Rigorous validation of the numerical algorithm must necessarily be performed via this separate effects testing.
