Capturing droplet flight and impingement behavior in plasma–MIG process for metal droplet-on-demand applications

On-demand metal droplet deposition has garnered increased interest in recent years owing to its potential applications additive manufacturing. Plasma inert gas (plasma MIG DD), a unique variant of plasma welding, allows the individual droplets with high accuracy, minimal melting substrate, and spatter fume generation. This study develops an in-depth understanding both process physics dynamics through development computational fluid dynamics-based multiphase simulation methodology. The investigation elucidates flight, post-impingement spreading, cooling, solidification behavior for different initial temperatures substrate materials. final morphology predicted by agrees well experimental results (error≤10%). reveals that is dependent on temperature material properties substrate. When copper impinges it attains spherical shape small contact surface. On other hand, when aluminum takes more flattened smaller angle higher area. maximum spread at all temperatures. Higher penetration compared indicated contours establishes suitability depositing droplets. presented are fundamental provide pathway parametric optimization, design, reverse engineering wide array droplet-on-demand applications.