Mechanism evaluations of conventional and suspended HVOF thermal spraying based on EDC and EDM combustion models

Suspended high-velocity oxygen fuel (SHVOF) thermal spraying technology can spray solid particles with nano or sub-micron scale, and effectively prepare high quality coatings by wrapping solid particles into suspension with solvent. The HVOF and SHVOF processes are numerically simulated in this study. The gas phase and discrete phase were simulated by the bidirectional coupling Euler-Lagrange method. The state equation of ideal gas and realizable k-epsilon turbulence model were used to simulate gas phase flow. The effect of eddy dissipation model (EDM) and eddy dissipation concept (EDC) model on turbulent combustion reaction was discussed. Due to that EDM model simplifies the Arrhenius rate of different reactions, there are errors in the prediction of spraying combustion process. To solve the problem, the chemical kinetic mechanism of multi-component combustion reaction for the propylene, ethanol and oxygen was introduced in EDC model for the first time in this study. This method has not yet been used in the modeling of thermal spraying. The suspended droplets are a mixture of ethanol and WC-12Co powder. Results show that the atomization and evaporation of suspension significantly disturb the flow field and reduce the internal pressure and temperature of spray gun. Compared with the EDM model, the EDC model can well predict the peak temperature in the combustion chamber, the prediction of particle temperature and velocity is higher, and the temperature and velocity decay are slower during flight. Compared with the median particle size d50 in actual, two combustion models can effectively predict the median particle size after drying, which is the premise of accurately predicting the flight characteristics of particles.