Binshi Xu

Numerical Simulation of the Twin-Wire Arc Spraying Process: Modeling the High Velocity Gas Flow Field Distribution and Droplets Transport

During the twin-wire arc spraying, a high velocity gas stream is used to accelerate the arc-melting materials and propel the droplets toward the substrate surface. This study is aimed at investigating the gas flow formation and droplets transport processes using numerical simulation method. Results from the 3-D gas flow field model show that the distribution of the gas flow velocity on the twin-wire intersection plane is quite different from that on the twin-wire vertical plane. Based on the 3-D model, the convergence amplitude of the high velocity zone in the jet center is improved by modifying the gun head design. It is also observed that a flat substrate existed downstream from the gas nozzle exit results in decreasing close to zero in velocity of the gas jet near the substrate. In addition, the predicted droplet trajectories and velocity distributions exhibited good agreement with experimentally observations.

High velocity electric arc sprayed Fe-Al-Nb-B composite coating and its wear behavior

A type of Fe-Al-Nb-B cored wire was designed and the coating was prepared using a robot-based electric wire arc spraying process. The Fe-Al binary cored wire and coating were also prepared as comparison. The phase composition and structure of the coatings were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The coating tribological properties were evaluated with the micromotion wear tester under different conditions. The results show that, although typical lamellar structure was performed for both the arc sprayed Fe-Al-Nb-B coating and Fe-Al coating, the structure composition, mechanical and wear properties of the former are quite different from those of latter. The Fe-Al-Nb-B coating is a typical composite coating, which is distributed inhomogeneously with α-Fe crystalline, FeAl and Fe3Al intermetallics, amorphous and nanocrystallines as well as locally existed oxide phases. As a result, the mircrohardness and wear resistance of the Fe-Al-Nb-B composite coating increased significantly. Finally the mechanism of the coating wear resistant behavior was discussed based on the experimental results such as friction coefficient, two dimensional and three dimensional worn surface profiles.

Elastoplastic analysis of process induced residual stresses in thermally sprayed coatings

The residual stresses induced from thermal spraying process have been extensively investigated in previous studies. However, most of such works were focused on the elastic deformation range. In this paper, an elastoplastic model for predicting the residual stresses in thermally sprayed coatings was developed, in which two main contributions were considered, namely the deposition induced stress and that due to differential thermal contraction between the substrate and coating during cooling. The deposition induced stress was analyzed based on the assumption that the coating is formed layer-by-layer, and then a misfit strain is accommodated within the multilayer structure after the addition of each layer (plastic deformation is induced consequently). From a knowledge of specimen dimensions, processing temperatures, and material properties, residual stress distributions within the structure can be determined by implementing the model with a simple computer program. A case study for the plasma sprayed NiCoCrAlY on Inconel 718 system was performed finally. Besides some similar phenomena observed from the present study as compared with previous elastic model reported in literature, the elastoplastic model also provides some interesting features for prediction of the residual stresses.