En
期刊文章
文章精选
当期目录
过刊浏览
高被引
高下载
特邀文章
专刊合集
待刊文章
Volume 102
您当前的位置：首页 > 期刊文章 > 当期目录 > Volume 102
Numerical study and experimental validation of copper powder plasma spheroidization process
M. Hossein Sehhat *, Ming C. Leu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, 65409, United States
10.1016/j.partic.2025.04.006
Volume 102, July 2025, Pages 78-85
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, 65409, United States
E-mail: hsehhat@mst.edu
Highlights

• In powder-based AM, spherical particles improve the quality of fabricated parts.

• Plasma spheroidization enhances particle sphericity (melt and reshape to spheres).

• Simulation literature still lacks the evaluation of particle geometry after spheroidization.

• Copper powder was plasma spheroidized and its impact on particle size and geometry was studied.

• For the first time in literature, a simulation method was proposed to quantify particle geometry per residence time.


Abstract

The powder characteristics, such as particle size and geometry, play an important role in determining the quality of powder layer and parts fabricated with powder-based additive manufacturing processes. Previous research has found that spherical particles result in better powder flowability and spreadability. An attempt to improve particle sphericity is to process the powder using plasma spheroidization, where the particles heat up, melt, and reshape to spheres. Several research works have been conducted to study the plasma spheroidization process and understand particle-plasma reactions. Although researchers have turned to simulations to overcome the difficulty of experimental study of such reactions, they only characterized the powder particle size without evaluating the particle geometry. In this work, the plasma spheroidization process of copper powder was numerically and experimentally examined to assess the impact of plasma spheroidization on particle size and geometry. For the first time in the literature, a method of simulation was proposed to numerically quantify the particle geometry at each particle residence time. The results of simulation agreed well with those of experiments.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Plasma spheroidization; Copper; Powder; Simulation; Ansys Fluent; Additive manufacturing
文章导读