Numerical simulation of electrostatic spray-painting processes in the automotive industry

The present annual report summarises ongoing investigations performed at the Institut für Industrielle Fertigung und Fabrikbetrieb Universität Stuttgart (IFF) on the numerical simulation of spray painting in the automotive industry. Two examples, i.e. powder coating simulation using a corona spray gun and spray-painting simulation with high-speed rotary bell are showed. Numerical models for electrostatically supported painting processes were implemented in Fluent, a commercial CFD code based on an unstructured finite volume mesh. These models account for all important effects involved in the relevant physical processes, being able to predict the film thickness distribution and the paint transfer efficiency on the work piece. The calculations were carried out using VOLVOX-Cluster in the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart.