Modeling of Thermal Plasma Jets: A Comparison Between PHOENICS and FLUENT

Abstract

The modeling of thermal plasma jets is commonly used in order to obtain a better knowledge and understanding of the atmospheric plasma spray process. Many different software products are used in the literature at present but none of them present the same ease in integrating the plasma properties and none of them propose the same options: for example concerning turbulence modeling or concerning the implemented numerical methods. All that may result in differences in the converged solution and in the required computational time. For this reason, two different software products have been tested in the present study, namely the PHOENICS CFD code developed by CHAM (Wimbledon, UK) and the FLUENT CFD code developed by FLUENT Inc (Lebanon, NH, US). The comparisons concern different points such as the possibilities in implementing the plasma gas properties, the way the energy equation is considered, the available turbulence models or the implemented numerical methods. The conclusion indicates that some differences exist in the numerical results obtained using the two CFD packages.

Three-dimensional effects of carrier gas and particle injections on the thermo-fluid fields of plasma jets

“…The temperature-dependent transport and thermodynamic properties of Ar and entrained air used for the calculations are taken from [16]. The simple mixing rule adopted to account for the mixing of the Ar plasma jet into air [17]…”