Abstract
Plasma spraying is a complicated process involving many partly interdependent parameters, which are in industrial spray environments difficult to optimise without laborious and time consuming experiments. In this work a non-intensified CCD camera without any external illumination is used for in-flight particle visualisation. Particle visualisation is based purely on the spontaneous light emitted by the hot particles. The motivation for this work is to outline the possibilities to develope a CCD based, low cost and rugged in-situ measurement system suitable also for industrial use. The measurement method has been tested with Plasmatechnik A3000S plasma spraying equipment using fused and crushed Al2O3 powder. Using digital image processing techniques relative particle concentrations and particle velocities have been calculated from the acquired images. These results have been correlated with wear resistance and deposition efficiency of the coatings produced with different powder feed rate and powder port adjustments. Coatings were also produced using both new and worn electrodes. The benefits and limitations of the method are discussed and the measurement results are compared against measurements made using laser sheet illumination, which can give information concerning also the colder and/or smaller particles not visible for the passive CCD system.
