Prediction of critical velocity during cold spraying based on a coupled thermomechanical eulerian model

In cold spraying (CS), critical velocity of particles is the most important parameter. The impacting particles and substrate inevitably undergo a strong thermomechanical coupling process and serious plastic deformation in a very short time. In this paper, a coupled thermomechanical Eulerian (CTM-Eulerian) model was, for the first time, developed for CS particles to investigate the plastic deformation, heat conduction, and predict the critical velocity. Results show that the heat conduction has a significant effect on the temperature distribution within the particle, while a little influence on deformation. Moreover, based on the deformed shapes and plastic strain analysis, a calculated critical velocity of about 300m/s for copper is obtained, which seems more reasonable than that from the adiabatic Eulerian simulations. Finally, this CTM-Eulerian model is extended to other commonly sprayed materials and the predicted critical velocities of Al, SS304, Fe, and In718 are about 410m/s, 400m/s, 350m/s and 490m/s, respectively.