Abstract
Thermal spray is one of the successful surface finishing methods that provides restoration or a new function on various mechanical components. In the thermal spray process solid particles are accelerated by a high temperature and high velocity gas stream. After impacting on the surface of the substrate, the particles are deformed into a coating. The particle velocity is often measured by Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). However, the meaning of the velocity vectors, obtained by the PIV with thermal spray powder as seeding particle, is not clear since the solid powder has a wide diameter range. This paper shows the consideration on the PIV data, with thermal spray particle as seeding powder, based on gas-particle two-phase flow. Comparison of the PIV measurement result and the calculated result reveals that the velocity obtained by PIV is almost identical to that of the area-averaged diameter of the seeding thermal spray powder.
