Abstract
The relationship between the optical emission spectroscopy and the microstructure of CoCrMoW coatings by laser melting deposition was investigated. The relationship between the primary dendrite spacing and microhardness of CoCrMoW coatings at different laser powers of spectral signal was studied. A new spectral signal index, the integral area, was proposed, and the electron temperature was calculated from four discrete Cr I spectral lines. The results show that with increasing the laser power from 400 W to 1000 W, the average primary dendrite spacing is increased from 3.426 μm to 7.420 μm, and the microhardness HV0.2 is reduced from 3461 MPa to 3095 MPa. The integral area and electron temperature of the spectral is also increased with increasing the laser power. The primary dendrite spacing of the coating is positively linear-related with the spectral signal, while the microhardness of the coatings is negatively linear-related with the spectral signal. In this research, compared with the electron temperature, the integral area shows a better potential for the prediction of the primary dendrite spacing and microhardness of coatings.
Science Press
CoCr alloy has been used in aero-engine, turbine blad
It is known that the mechanical properties of CoCr alloys, such as tensile properties, wear resistance, and microhardness, are determined by their microstructure. For example, Qian et a
Recently, in order to improve the quality and reliability of parts manufactured by laser-based AM, much attention is paid on real-time monitoring technique
In this research, an in-situ spectral monitoring system was established for manufacturing CoCrMoW alloy using LMD. The spectra of the melting pool at different laser powers were analyzed. The relationship among the spectral signal of the melting pool, primary dendrite spacing, and microhardness at different processing parameters using the integral area of spectral curve and electron temperature was established.
In this study, CoCrMoW powders with size ranging from 45 μm to 106 μm were used.

Fig.1 SEM morphology of CoCrMoW alloy powder
In this study, a beam of continuous wave (CW) fiber laser (wavelength of 1064 nm) was used for LMD. The powder was fed into the melting pool through a coaxial nozzle using a RC-PGF-D powder feeder (Raycham, China). In the multi-track cladding experiment, the laser power was increased from 400 W to 1000 W with a step size of 200 W at a scanning speed of 8 mm/s, and the spot diameter was 2 mm. An overlap ratio of 50% and a powder feeding rate of 25 g/min were selected.
The spectra produced during laser cladding were collected by a flame miniature spectrometer (Ocean Optics, Flame-S) with an entrance slit of 25 μm. The spectrometer used a linear silicon charge transfer device array (Sony ILX 511) with 2048 pixels and an integration time of 10 ms. The detector was fixed on the laser head with an angle of about 80°, i.e., about 10° from the substrate, as indicated in

Fig.2 Schematic diagram of experiment device
Metallographic specimens were prepared to study the relationship between the spectral signal and the microstructure of the coating. SEM (ZEISS Sigma 300) and X-ray diffraction (XRD, D/MAX-2500, Cu target, 40 kV, 140 mA) were used to analyze the microstructure and phases of the coating. Microhardness of the coating was measured by HV-1000 Vickers hardness tester at load of 0.2 kg for loading time of 10 s. The collected spectra were analyzed offline to identify the discrete spectra, and then the integral area and electron temperature signals were used for further study.
(1) |
(2) |
where K is the thermal conductivity of alloy, T is liquid temperature of alloy, T0 is initial temperature of substrate, ε is absorption efficiency of laser, P is laser power, Vs is laser scanning speed, θ is the included angle between Vs and R. During LMD, the cooling rate GR determines the grain size of solidified structure with an inversely proportional relationship. It is also known that the morphology of the solidified structure is affected by G/R. With the decrease of G/R, the degree of constitutional supercooling is increased, and the solidification mode changes from planar to cellular and columnar crystal, and finally to equiaxed crysta
(3) |
where a is a coefficient.
It can also be seen from

Fig.3 shows SEM images of CoCrMoW coatings prepared at different laser powers with a constant scanning speed of 8 mm/s. It is obvious that the average coating thickness is increased from 0.37 mm to 1.23 mm with increasing the laser power from 400 W to 1000 W, as indicated in Fig.3a1~3a4. Due to the rapid melting and solidification of powders in LMD, the microstructure can be determined by constitutional supercooling theor
At the bottom part of coating, as shown in
The average primary dendrite spacing is determined by the number of grains passing through a straight line of a certain length, as shown in Fig.4. When the laser power is 400 W, the average primary dendrite spacing of columnar dendrite crystals in bottom part of coating is 4.538 μm, as listed in


The phase component of CoCrMoW coatings at different powers is analyzed by XRD. The influence of laser power on phase component is presented in Fig.5a. The XRD patterns show the presence of γ and ε phases with different grain orientation
2dsin=nλ
(n=1,2,3…) (4)
where d is the inter-plane distance, θ is half scattering angle, and λ is the X-ray wavelength. The inter-plane distance shows negative correlation with the diffraction angle. Consequently, the inter-plane distance of CoCrMoW coatings decreases at first, then increases, and decreases finally.
Meanwhile, the full-width half-maximum (FWHM) of the diffraction peaks is decreased with increasing the laser power from 400 W to 1000W, as shown in Fig.5b. According to the Scherrer formul
(5) |
where L is the average grain size, K is a constant related to grain shape, and β is FWHM. Therefore, FWHM is inversely proportional to the average grain size, and the average grain size is decreased with increasing the laser power.

Fig.6a shows the microhardness of the coating at different positions, and a clearly increasing microhardness can be observed in the coating. The average microhardness HV0.2 is reduced from 3461 MPa to 3095 MPa with increasing the laser power from 400 W to 1000 W. When the laser power increases from 400 W to 1000 W, the grain size increases as the solidification rate decreases, as shown in
The original spectra of CoCrMoW alloys obtained during LMD at different laser powers are shown in Fig.7a. Under the laser cladding condition, the major component of the optical emission is Planck's radiation of the melt pool surface, and thus a possible reason for the continuous background is the thermal radiation from the surface. The spectral lines are produced by the transition of electrons from high energy level m to low energy level
(6) |
where Nm is the population of the upper state m (c

(7) |
where N is the population of ground state particles (c
It is known that in thermal radiation field, Planck's formula describes the relationship between the emissivity and frequency of electromagnetic radiation emitted from a blackbody. Stefan Boltzmann's law states the total energy radiated by a blackbody surface per unit area across all wavelengths per unit time, which can be obtained by integrating Planck's formula over the entire spectru
The spectral intensity Imn in the whole monitored wavelength range is integrated without background subtraction, while the continuous background radiation is treated as noise which needs to be deducted in normal spectral analysis. The total integral area IA of the spectra can be obtained, as shown in Fig.7b, which is regarded as the total radiation intensity in this range. With increasing the laser power from 400 W to 1000 W, IA is increased almost linearly from 8.392×1
Electron temperature is an important parameter to characterize plasma produced by the interaction between laser and metal powder, which reflects the thermal input of laser. Electron temperature can be calculated by the relative intensities of discrete spectral lines by the Boltzmann plot metho
By comparing the intensity Ii of a wavelength i and the average value of two adjacent sampling points in the spectrum, the rapid changing information in the spectrum can be strippe

(8) |
where λmn is the wavelength of the spectral line (nm), c is the light speed (m/s).
Fig.8 Algorithm flow chart of iterative stripping

Thus, the electron temperature Te can be estimated from the inverse of the slope -1/(kTe) fitted from the calculated data of multiple spectral lines, as shown in Fig.9a. The parameters used for calculation in
Fig.10 shows the intensity of spectral lines at different laser powers. Three spectral lines with the wavelength of 520.017, 580.022, and 605.513 nm were selected because of their appropriate intensities, FWHM, as well as less interference. It can be clearly seen that the intensities of three chosen spectral lines are increased with increasing the laser power. The reason for this phenomenon can be explained by


The relationship between the spectral related information (integral area IA and average electron temperature Te) and microstructures (average primary dendrite spacing δ and average microhardness) of the CoCrMoW coatings are shown in Fig.11. It can be clearly seen that all the four fitting curves have linear relationships. Moreover, the integral area and electron temperature are positively correlated with the primary dendrite spacing δ of CoCrMoW coatings, as shown in Fig.11a and 11c; while they are negatively correlated with the microhardness of CoCrMoW coatings, as shown in Fig.11b and 11d. This is because the microstructure and integral area are closely related to the melting pool. The microstructure is formed after the melting pool solidifies, and the spectral signal radiated from the melting pool is determined by the state of the melting pool which is related to the heat input of laser. The increase of heat input leads to the increase of electron temperature, which promotes the collisional excitation of particles, increases the number of excited state particles, radiates more photons through energy level transition, and finally leads to the increase of the spectral intensity radiated from the melting pool. Thus, the larger integral area IA and higher electron temperature Te can directly reflect the increasing heat input, which leads to the grain coarsening and reduces the microhardness of the coatings. The results show that the linearity of relationship corresponding to the integral area is more obvious than that corresponding to electronic temperature due to the larger R-Square, namely higher accuracy.
Therefore, the spectral signals can be used to predict the average primary dendrite spacing δ and average micro-hardness of CoCrMoW coatings processed by LMD. In addition, the integral area can directly reflect the heat input determined by the laser power without complex calculations. Thus, it can also be used to monitor LMD after calibration, and to avoid the inaccurate output power caused by the damage of optical lens or laser attenuation.
1) The integral area of spectral curve proposed in this study and the electron temperature are increased almost linearly with increasing the laser power. However, the microhardness of CoCrMoW coating is decreased with increasing the laser power due to the coarsening of microstructure.
2) The spectral analyses indicate that the integral area show good capability for predicting the average primary dendrite spacing and the average microhardness of CoCrMoW coating. The results suggest that the spectral signal can be used to predict the microstructure (primary dendrite spacing and microhardness) of the coating.
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