Advanced Manufacturing Engineering in Thermal Spray Coating Technologies

Plasma physics and material science have dominated academic research in thermal spray technologies in recent decades. Value adding by creation and manufacturing of competitive products with advanced coating technologies employed needs a state of the art approach in manufacturing engineering. Thinking in process chains and managing all steps of them with a focus on product performance, reliability and customer satisfaction is an indispensable methodology for modern manufacturing engineering with complex high technologies. Materials mechanics and the understanding of process induced residual stresses and their interaction with operational load stresses are further issues in product development of coatings and layer composite structures. Intensive heat and mass transfer up to supersonic conditions have a distinct influence on coating properties. The same is true for the torch trajectories and robot kinematics programming with their influence on local resolution of these parameters and subsequently on the achievable dimensional tolerances and reproducibility in industrial processes. Last not least the process variants have to be matched to meet the best fit of functional requirements of the product in its specific application field. Modeling and simulation concepts are shown to demonstrate their potential and benefit for industrial product development.