Microwave plasma at atmospheric pressure for thermal spray technology

Summary form only given, as follows. Recent developments in "cold" and microwave thermal spraying allow the coating process to be considered for many different applications with a wide range of coatings and substrates. This project will investigate the use of an atmospheric microwave plasma, at 2.46GHz frequency, for preheat gases and coating powders as well the key applications of these processes to automotive industry. The use of material enhanced tailored blanks for BIW construction will allow new design processes and rules to be developed. There are also no restrictions on the material types, which can be used as substrates, and coating powders because the basic process is forging. The coating of dissimilar metals will be exploited to investigate both the enhanced strength and the reduced weight. Body fillers and panel repairs will be easier to attain. The heating process of this novel technique is obtained by the combination of dielectric and microwave plasma heating by using a long interaction cavity, the thermal efficiency of the process will be as high as 50% compared with the present commercial plasma heated device which is in the order of 5%. The system apparatus, microwave plasma and gas interaction cavity and resulted will be presented.