Abstract
The effects of powder loading on temperature distributions of yttria-stabilized zirconia particles during flight, which can be used as a melting status indicator, were investigated in atmospheric dc plasma spraying. Commercially available diagnostic systems were utilized to measure the state of in-flight particle parameters. As the powder feed rate was increased, the intensity of a peak related to the latent heat increased, suggesting the increase of semi molten particles. Interesting findings are that the deposition efficiency of the coating actually increased in some conditions at higher powder feed rates. This implies that higher molten degrees of particles do not always give higher deposition efficiencies. The loading effects also affected the result of diagnostics, which requires special care when the diagnostic condition is different from the actual spray conditions.
