Pressure and arc voltage coupling in dc plasma torches: Identification and extraction of oscillation modes

Abstract

This work is devoted to the instabilities occurring in a plasma torch, such as those found in plasma spraying. These instabilities are responsible for a lack of reproducibility of coatings properties, especially in the case of suspension plasma spraying that is an innovative way to obtain thin coatings of submicron-sized particles. Strong Helmholtz oscillations are highlighted in the plasma flow and it is demonstrated that they overlap with different acoustic modes in addition with the more commonly admitted "restrike" mode, the later being due to rearcing events in the arc region. The instabilities occur in the arc voltage but it is experimentally shown in this paper that the pressure within the torch body presents the same kind of instabilities. Besides, a numerical filtering technique has been adapted to isolate the different instability components. The operating parameters of the plasma torch were varied in order to highlight their influence on the amplitude of the different modes, both for the arc voltage and the pressure. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.