Phase field modeling of particle solidification in thermal spray

This work demonstrates an
accurate mesoscopic model for solidification in thermal
spray, where particles solidify rapidly upon impact.
This leads to microstructures with metastable phases,
high residual stresses, and heterogeneous distribution
of grains and solutes; these features need to be
incorporated in an integrated computational materials
engineering (ICME) tool for thermal spray.

A predetermined temperature history is used in a phase field model (PF),
which can predict the heterogeneous distribution of
dendrites, and solute distribution. In our phase field
simulations, we assume a dilute binary alloy.

The above-described PF simulation scheme can be used to predict the coating
microstructure, which can be subsequently be used to
simulate the material properties such as strength and
toughness in the coating layer using high-fidelity
finite-element methods.