Effect of electrostatic rotating bell atomizer parameters on automotive paint quality and deposition efficiency

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Automotive paints are applied using Electrostatic Rotating Bell (ESRB) atomizers that deliver a highly uniform film thickness. Robot manipulators move the paint atomizers over the car body and it can take months to optimize the robot path to minimize paint consumption and application time while depositing a film with acceptable uniformity. It would be of significant commercial value to identify the film thickness resulting from a given spray path and determine spray parameters such as droplet size distribution and velocity that gives the best paint quality. In this collaborative project we propose to:- Correlate changes in paint quality and transfer efficiency with droplet size distributions and the spray pattern produced by ESRB atomizers.- Establish the physical mechanism that links changes in droplet size and spray pattern to changes in the paint filmDroplet size distributions will be measured by directly imaging the spray and using image analysis software to determine droplet diameters. Changes in droplets sizes will be correlated with shifts in paint colour. High speed videos will be taken of droplet impingement on surfaces. Laboratory experiments will be done to study droplet impingement on surfaces, the rate of evaporation of paint droplets and models will be developed to predict paint film thickness as a function of the droplet mass flux.