Abstract
The development of new plasma spray torches reinforced the use of numerical modelling to help in the design steps. Most of the thermal spray material providers are thus now interested in understanding the arc behaviour inside the torch so that CFD studies focussed on this topic become numerous. Our first calculations performed on the ProPlasma HP gun assuming a laminar hypothesis have shown underestimations of the torch voltage and of the thermal losses in the cooling circuit, and a subsequent overestimation of the thermal efficiency of the torch. In the present study, the setup of different turbulence models was performed and a comparison was made between the results obtained using either the laminar assumption or several turbulence models. The calculations indicate that the results obtained using conventional turbulence models such as k-ε or k-ω type models do not significantly differ from those obtained using a laminar assumption, thus only more sophisticated models can be expected to improve the simulations.
