Heat transfer modeling of laser cladding process – role of location of injection of powder particles

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.A two-dimensional heat transfer model is developed to study the role of the location of injection of powder particles in to the melt pool stirred by convection due to thermo capillary force during the powder blown laser cladding process. The effects of both positive and negative surface tension coefficients and the absorbed laser power are studied. For the positive surface tension coefficients the powder is injected in a region where the flow velocity is in the direction of powder injection velocity and therefore the particles travel a little deeper into the melt pool. For negative surface tension coefficients the powder is injected in a region where the flow in opposite to the direction of injection velocity and the particles always stay very close to the melt pool surface. To solve the discretized governing equations finite volume method in a multiblock non-orthogonal grid system with collocated primitive variable approach is utilized.