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2806 |
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Turbulence effects in a DC plasma torch |
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Rodolphe Bolot* / ICB-UBFC, LERMPS-UTBM, France Alain Allimant/ Saint-Gobain Coating Solutions, FRANCE Dominique Billieres/ Saint-Gobain Coating Solutions, FRANCE Christian Coddet/ UTBM-LERMPS, FRANCE |
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The development of new plasma spray torches reinforced the use of numerical modelling to help in the design phases. Most of the material providers are thus now interested in understanding the arc behaviour inside the torch so that CFD studies focussed on this topic become numerous. Our first calculations performed on the ProPlasma HP gun assuming a laminar hypothesis have shown an underestimation of the thermal losses in the cooling circuit and a subsequent overestimation of the thermal efficiency of the torch. In the present study, the setup of a turbulence model was performed and a comparison was made between the results obtained using either the laminar assumption or the turbulence model. The calculations show improvements of the numerical predictions in comparison with the corresponding experiments. |