Mathematical modeling of a free plasma jet discharging into air and comparison with probe measurements

摘要

Plasma spraying process modeling is useful to understand physical phenomena and to decrease the number of experiments. In this paper, a study of the external plasma jet is proposed: the PHOENICS~(TM) CFD code was used with a 2D axisymmetrical geometry and a standard K-#epsilon# turbulence model. In a first step, thermodynamic and transport properties were calculated from chemical equilibrium composition, thermodynamic derivatives and kinetic theory of gases. Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) was assumed for both plasma and surrounding gases. The proposed numerical results were computed for comparison with temperature measurements realized by Brossa and Pfender in the case of an argon plasma jet discharging into air, using enthalpy probes. The predictions were found reasonably accurate. The influence of the surrounding gas nature was also verified as the validity of the parabolic assumption.