Abstract
A study of the flattening and cooling of particles plasma-sprayed on a substrate is presented. The characteristic parameters of the splats are linked to the parameters of the impacting particles by using an experimental device consisting of a phase Doppler particle analyzer and a high-speed pyrometer. However, during the long experiments required to get reliable correlations, it was observed that variations in plasma spray operating conditions may alter the particles behavior in the plasma jet. Therefore, a simple and easy-to-use system was developed to control in real time the spray jet. In this paper, the effect of carrier gas flow rate, arc current and powder mass flow rate is investigated. The results on zirconia and alumina powders show the capability of the technique to sense the particle spray position and width.
