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Influence of Nozzle Throat Cross Section on Microstructure and Properties of Cold Sprayed Coatings

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Abstract

In cold spray, the coating microstructure and properties are strongly dependent on the particle velocity before impact. Particle velocity for a given powder and thereby energy consumption during the process are mainly dependent on process pressure, process temperature and nozzle geometry. Of the several aspects of nozzle geometry, the throat cross section determines the mass flow rate and thereby the total energy for the process. While reduction in throat cross section reduces the energy consumption per unit time of operation, viscous boundary layer effects become significant at smaller throat cross sections causing reduction in gas and particle velocities. This work explores the effect of throat cross section on the particle velocity distribution and thereby the coating microstructure and properties. Computational fluid dynamic simulations are also carried out to rationalize the observations. Our results corroborate the theoretical findings of previous work based on nozzle exit or throat width h to divergent length L ratio, i.e., h/L. Moreover, it was found that nozzles with lower throat cross section (h/L < 0.02) consume significantly higher energy per unit mass of coating due to longer coating duration and significant boundary layer effects in addition to yielding relatively poorer coating property.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Director, ARCI, for granting permission to publish this article. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support extended by Mr. Vikas Reddy, GTP and Mr. B. Vignesh, JRF, for help during experimentation and modeling. One of the authors would like to thank Dr. S. Kumar for useful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials, ARCI, Hyderabad, India

    Naveen Manhar Chavan, M. Vinod Kumar & P. Sudharshan Phani

  2. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Prita Pant

  3. Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India

    G. Sundararajan

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  1. Naveen Manhar Chavan
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  2. M. Vinod Kumar
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  3. P. Sudharshan Phani
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  4. Prita Pant
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  5. G. Sundararajan
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Correspondence to Naveen Manhar Chavan.

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Chavan, N.M., Vinod Kumar, M., Sudharshan Phani, P. et al. Influence of Nozzle Throat Cross Section on Microstructure and Properties of Cold Sprayed Coatings. J Therm Spray Tech 28, 1718–1729 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11666-019-00913-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11666-019-00913-w

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