Abstract
A plasma torch can stabilize high temperature arc plasma by employing shielding gas and has high heating efficiency and highly controllable characteristics. Therefore, it is widely utilized as a heat source device, for example, for production of nano-particles, material processing, or treatment of toxic waste and so on. Tube Cathode Arc (TCA) is a kind of plasma torch which produces the arc plasma by introducing the shielding gas from the hole of the tube cathode. It has been studied as a heat source especially in lower pressure environment, for example, for space welding or plasma CVD. For an application in atmospheric pressure, it enables heating of materials uniformly and, therefore, to be suitable for processes such as thermal spraying, brazing or buildup. In this paper, as basic energy source properties of argon TCA, dependence of the arc plasma property on cathode shapes such as diameter and conical angle of the cathode are numerically analyzed.
