With the development of material science and spraying
technology, plasma technology has been widely applied in
the field of mechanic manufacture. Spray forming has special
superiority in rapid tooling and thin-wall parts forming in
recent years [1]. For instance, arc spray forming can rapidly
produce thin-wall parts made of metal and composite materials,
and fabricate plastic mould made of Al–Zn alloy and
stainless steel mould by the post process of backing treatment
and reinforcement of resin or alloy with low melting
point [2,3]. Due to the complicated influences of spraying
condition and multi-parameters, it is difficult to investigate
directly such factors as those affecting forming quality, which
becomes the bottleneck problem of popularizing this technology.
Jandin et al. [4] analyzed the effects of arc spraying
parameters on microstructure and mechanical properties of
coating, and Sampath and Jiang [5] investigated the influ-