The gas-dynamic spray coating is a technique in which surface coating is formed by treatment of a metallic substrate by a high-velocity impinging particle-laden jet. This process generates a thin layer with a complex nanocrystalline structure in the impingement zone. Optimization of spraying systems continues evolving from an empirical trial and error process to a model-based approach by virtue of the improving completeness and predictive capacity of mathematical models.

In this project with the Laboratory of Thermal Spray and Functional Coatings, direct numerical simulation of a turbulent Lagrangian particle-laden jet is being combined with the impact and agglomeration modeling to control the coating layer non-uniform growth.

Impinging particle-laden jet. Color plot of the absolute velocity magnitude (blue is zero, red is the maximum) and scatter plot of the positions of the Lagrangian particles colored according to the diameter (blue are the small, red are the large).

1) M. Vulf, V. Petrov, A. Sulimov, A. Simonova, A. Kazak, S. Chugunov, D. Kolomenskiy. A novel droplet generator and a bench-testing rig enabling research on suspension droplet wall impingement and particle deposition. Coatings 13(1):129, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings13010129