Research on Acceleration Mechanism of Inflight Particle and Gas Flow Effect for the Velocity Control in Vacuum Kinetic Spray Process

Vacuum kinetic spray(VKS) is a relatively advanced process for fabricating thin/thick and dense ceramic coatings via submicron-sized particle impact at room temperature. However, unfortunately, the particle velocity, which is an important value for investigating the deposition mechanism, has not been clarified yet. Thus, in this research, VKS average particle velocities were derived by numerical analysis method(CFD: computational fluid dynamics) connected with an experimental approach(SCM: slit cell method). When the process gas or powder particles are accelerated by a compressive force generated by gas pressure in kinetic spraying, a tensile force generated by the vacuum in the VKS system accelerates the process gas. As a result, the gas is able to reach supersonic speed even though only 0.6MPa gas pressure is used in VKS. In addition, small size powders can be accelerated up to supersonic velocity by means of the drag-force of the low pressure process gas flow. Furthermore, in this process, the increase of gas flow makes the drag-force stronger and gas distribution more homogenized in the pipe, by which the total particle average velocity becomes higher and the difference between max. and min. particle velocity decreases. Consequently, the control of particle size and gas flow rate are important factors in making the velocity of particles high enough for successful deposition in the VKS system.