Numerical simulation of several impacting ceramic droplets with liquid/solid phase change

• Numerical simulations of ceramic droplet impacts by finite volumes
• Analysis of droplet impacts, micrometer and microsecond scales
• Analysis of heat flux, whether impacts occur on the substrate or a previous droplet
• Investigation of porosity, related to hydrodynamics and solidification phenomena

This paper is dedicated to numerical simulations of impact and solidification of several ceramic droplets on a solid substrate. This process is usually encountered in ceramic plasma spraying to manufacture thick coatings. The characteristics of the final product are deeply related to the impact conditions of the droplets, since the particles can interact with the substrate or with neighboring droplets and induce a variable porosity. The objective of the numerical simulation is to gain a better understanding of the coating properties during its elaboration. This paper describes the numerical code based on a finite volume discretization, and presents the results of successive droplets impacting, in terms of hydrodynamics, thermal flux and solid fraction evolutions with time for one given configuration.