Numerical simulation of coating growth and pore formation in rapid plasma spray tooling

Rapid plasma spray tooling (RPST) is a process that can quickly make molds from rapid prototyping or nature patterns without limitation of pattern's size or material. In this paper, the process of coating growth and pore formation in RPST has been analyzed by numerical simulation. The objective of this work was to determine the porosity in plasma sprayed coatings and verify the developed computer model, which might serve for future thermal residual stress studies of plasma sprayed coatings. The analysis was divided into two steps: particle flattening and coating growth. In the analysis, a ballistic model was used for modeling the in-flight powder particles. The method allows for the calculation of off-normal spray angle, which is common in plasma spraying of engineering components. Also, a set of rules for coating growth as well as pore formation in the coating has been proposed. Based on these works, a computer program was developed to calculate the effects of process parameters, such as gun scanning velocity, spray angle, etc., on the porosity of the coating. Finally, an experiment was carried out to verify the effects of spray parameters on the porosity. The results agree with the prediction of the model.