Plasma temperature decay due to polymer ablation by thermal plasma irradiation

In this paper, we investigated temperature decay of thermal plasmas due to polymer ablation using the inductively coupled thermal plasma (ICTP) irradiation technique. The features of the ICTP are no contamination and good controllability compared to arc plasmas with electrodes. The Ar-ICTP was directly irradiated to the polymer bulk materials placed at downstream region of the thermal plasma. Spectroscopic observation was carried out to obtain temperatures near the polymer specimen surface.A thermofluid model including thermal plasma and polymer ablation effect, and also thermal conduction in polymer has been also developed to consider the polymer ablation effects in thermal plasmas. Ablation flux was estimated by Hertz-Knudsen relation using Clausius- Clapeyron equation. Using this model, we can estimate effect of polymer ablation vapor on temperature decay around the polymer surface. The numerically simulated results were compared to the experimental results, and effective processes in the polymer ablation on the temperature decay were investigated from these comparisons.