Adhesion measurements for electrostatic powder coatings using a vertical drop test rig and LabVIEW software

The total forces holding a layer of electrostatically charged powder onto a metal work piece results from the combination effect of an interfacial electrochemical phenomenon, an inter-particle/particle cohesive force and a bulk electrostatic image attractive force. An attempt has been made to obtain the total integrated effect by subjecting the powder coating to a mechanical impulsive force parallel to the metal substrate. This is a destructive measurement which is obtained by dropping the work piece down a vertical chute which incorporates an inductive charge pick up device to measure the charge of the powder coating during free fall. The sample is brought to rest at the bottom of the chute and dislodged powder is collected in a micro balance incorporated inside a Faraday cage. The exact charge/mass ratio of dislodged powder can be obtained and the technique enables the calibration of the inductive probe. All the measurements are taken with the powder layer before fusing.LabVIEW by National Instruments is a user friendly and powerful graphical development environment used for signal acquisition, measurement analysis, and data presentation. It is a package designed to acquire, analyse and present. Data acquired from the unit under test can be fed through DAQ cards, instruments or PXI systems and connected to a PC running LabVIEW for analysis. With multiple built-in functions and libraries that cover functions such as analysing and processing and also data visualization and report generation, LabVIEW is highly useful in this application.     

Comparison of electrostatic fine powder coating and coarse powder coating by numerical simulations

Powder coating has several key advantages over liquid coating, and fine powder coating makes the surface finish quality comparable with liquid coating. This work reports on the numerical simulation of a fine powder-coating process in comparison with coarse powder coating, using a commercial computational fluid dynamic code, Fluent v6.1. The purpose of the study is to understand the gas and particle flow fields inside the coating booth for various operating conditions and the effect of reducing particle size on the coating process. The air and powder particle flows in a coating booth were modeled as a three-dimensional turbulent continuous gas flow with solid particles as a discrete phase. The continuous gas flow was calculated by solving the Navier–Stokes equations, including the standard k–ε turbulence model with non-equilibrium wall function. The discrete phase was modeled based on the Lagrangian approach. In addition to drag force and gravity, the electrostatic force including the effect of space charge due to free ions was considered in the equation of motion and implemented using user-defined scalars and user-defined functions. The governing equations were solved using a second-order upwind scheme. This study demonstrates that the use of finer particles of size 15 μm or lower can give a very smooth and uniform surface finish, which may serve the requirement of automotive top-clear coating. This also provides useful information about optimum operating conditions such as the airflow rate, the applied external voltage and the powder-spray rate. The numerical model can also be used to optimize the gun-booth design for a better coating efficiency.     

Computer design of thermal sprayed metal powder coatings

An approach to the modeling of the process of the formation of a lamellar structure of thermal coatings, including plasma coatings, at the spraying of metal powders is proposed. The results are presented, which concern the development of the computational algorithm and the program complex for modeling the process of laying the splats in the coating with regard for the topology of its surface, which varies dynamically at the spraying, as well as the formation of a lamellar structure and porosity of the coating. The experimentally verified theoretical solutions are used to predict the scenarios of the formation of splats and rapid prediction of their thicknesses and diameters. The results of computational experiments illustrating the performance of the developed computational technology are presented.     

Calculation of the thicknesses and elastic properties of thin-film coatings using atomic-force acoustic microscopy data

The feasibility of applying atomic-force acoustic microscopy to measure the elastic properties of thin-film coatings and their thickness in the range from several to several hundreds of nanometers is studied. In practice, this technique can be used to study diamond-like coatings. The key point of our method is application of “flat” tips, which provide a constant tip-surface contact area and, hence, a constant contact stiffness. The reason for using such tips is that experimental data for thin-film structures gained with standard (rounded) tips cannot be given an adequate quantitative interpretation. Numerical simulation is used to evaluate the thickness and indentation modulus of a coating from contact stiffness k _cont measured by atomic-force acoustic microscopy.     

Zirconia coatings deposited by electrostatic spray deposition A chemical approach

The present study is focused on the preparation of zirconia-based coatings obtained by Electrostatic Spray Deposition (ESD). Microstructural properties of ESD coatings were optimised versus the composition of the precursor solution and the substrate nature. This chemical approach includes the influence of zirconia precursors, yttrium chloride, solvent mixtures, zirconia precursor concentration, additives and substrate nature in order to optimally tune the microstructure of the coating. A smooth, dense and homogeneous thin layer was successfully deposited.     

Preparation of PVOH coatings with graphene nanoplatelets for electrostatic discharge protective packaging

This study investigated the use of graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) as a conductive filler for electrostatic discharge (ESD) protective packaging. Various weight concentrations of GNP were mixed and sonicated with polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH). The resulting polymer solution was applied as a coating to corrugated board in order to form an ESD packaging. Surface resistivity, mechanical strength and coating adhesion were then measured. The study found that the electrical percolation threshold of the PVOH/GNP coating is 9–13wt% GNP. GNP incorporated PVOH coatings with surface resistivity of 10³–10⁸ Ω/sq. generally meet all of ESD packaging requirements. The humidity strongly affects the surface resistivity of the coatings below the percolation threshold, but the change of the surface resistivity with humidity is less significant above the percolation threshold.     

Critical review of claims for ultra-hardness in nanocomposite coatings

Claims for ultra-hardness (H?≈?100?GPa) in nanocomposite coatings are critically examined in terms of the experimental evidence first presented in 1999 and theoretical support published over the past 10 years. It is shown that the results of experimental work cannot be validated, and that there are many unresolved issues associated with the supporting theoretical arguments. Using the methods outlined by the authors, whose work is reviewed here, but with more precise application of the equations involved, and reading directly from their reported relationships between Y and H, the best estimate of the hardness for the materials under consideration appears to be of the order of ≈55?GPa. This estimate is validated by actual measurements on a diamond sample and super-hard coatings, and finite element computations in comparison with experimental results for ultra-hard coatings. It is shown that the conclusions of the work being reviewed do not stand up to scrutiny and that the hardness of the ultra-hard coatings is most likely over-estimated by a factor of ≈2.     

Model of heating and ignition of conductive polydisperse powder in electrostatic discharge

Heating of a conductive polydisperse powder by electrostatic discharge (ESD) is modelled numerically. Powder packing is described using a discrete element model; powder resistance is defined by geometry of particle contacts and properties of plasma produced by electrical breakdown between neighbour particles. A set of parametric calculations in combination with experimental data is used to determine necessary adjustable model parameters. The model predicts the temperature for each powder particle resulting from its heating by the ESD current. Location and packing of individual particles within the powder affects greatly their achieved temperatures and thus the likelihood of ignition. Consistently with experiments, a trend showing that smaller particles are generally heated to higher temperatures at a given ESD energy is detected for coarser powders; this trend becomes less clear for finer powders with particle sizes less than the breakdown distance given by the Paschen curve in air. Comparison of the experimental data and calculations suggests that the transition from single particle to cloud combustion occurs when the distance between the particles ignited by ESD becomes close to the flame size for the individual burning particle. This distance, inversely proportional to the number of ignited particles, is primarily determined by the ESD energy.     

粉体工业静电防护技术研究进展

粉体静电灾害涉及面广、危害大，开发合理的粉体静电防灾技术是国民经济发展过程中需要解决的热点问题之一．近年来，粉体静电测试研究方法、粉体静电起电与放电研究方法、粉体静电危险性评价方法、粉体静电危险性分级理论等研究工作取得了较好的研究成果．根据粉体静电现实危险性量化分析的结果而采取的粉体防静电灾害技术措施，为粉体工业生产提供了一定的安全保障．     

Development of copper coatings on ceramic powder by electroless technique

Electroless (EL) coating technique is one of the elegant ways of coating by controlling the temperature and pH of the coating bath in which there is no usage of electric current. EL nano-copper coating on ceramic particles of micron size is not reported. In this investigation, ceramic powders of ∼100 μm size have been coated with copper by EL technique in the pH and temperature ranges of 12-13.5 and 60-85 °C, respectively. The optimization of EL copper bath has been evaluated through the combination of process parameters like pH and temperature. The optimized value of pH is found to be 12.5 and temperature as 75 °C. The coated and uncoated powders have been subjected to microstructural studies by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the phases present have been analyzed by X-ray diffraction. An attempt has been made to understand the bonding mechanism of coating. The adherence with the substrate is attributed to the chemical and mechanical bonding at the interface. A model has been suggested for the mechanical bonding effect at the interface.     

Measurement of the electrostatic powder coating properties for corona and triboelectric coating guns

Measurements have been made of the deposited powder layer for conventional electrostatic corona powder guns and triboelectric guns. By selectively removing the powder layer under computer control conditions, measurements of the powder thickness, and the adhesive properties of the powder layer have been obtained for variation in the coating process and detailed comparisons have been obtained for both coating systems.     

Numerical simulation of the electrostatic powder coating process with a corona spray gun

In this paper results of investigations are described aiming to numerically simulate the electrostatic powder coating process using an extended commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The fully three-dimensional turbulent flow was calculated. Based on the Lagrangian approach the trajectories of the powder particles were modelled considering electric and aerodynamic forces. In the calculations of the particle propagation both the particle size distribution and the particle charge distribution obtained through experiments have been applied. The model accounts for the space charge effect of the charged particles and the turbulence dispersion on the particle trajectories. It was found that the space charge plays an important role for the final spray pattern shape, also increasing the transfer efficiency. The numerical results, such as velocity profiles, static and dynamic film thickness on the target were in good agreement with experiment.     

Particle size,cohesiveness and charging effects on electrostatic and nonelectrostatic powder coating

Ten powders, differing in protein, carbohydrate and salt contents and ranging from 19 to 165 μm were coated by nonelectrostatic and electrostatic coating. Nonelectrostatic transfer efficiency (TE) increased to a maximum before leveling off with increasing particle size. Electrostatic TE either decreased or increased then decreased with increasing particle size. Powders became more free flowing as particle size increased. Since TE increases as powders become more free flowing, TE increased with particle size for both nonelectrostatic and electrostatic coating. For electrostatic coating, the effect of charge decreases with increasing particle size. Thus, the conflicting effects of ability to pick up charge and flowability caused an increase then decrease in the TE for powders coated electrostatically, and can also explain the exceptions. The average improvement in TE by electrostatic coating was 20%, with the improvement increasing as particle size decreased.     

氧化物正电荷影响下半导体空间电势的近似解析解研究

建立了半导体空间电势与界面氧化物正电荷之间联系的解析表达式。从一维情况下精确的泊松方程及其边界条件出发,对N(P)型硅半导体中的泊松方程作积累(耗尽)近似,根据德拜屏蔽效应对边界条件作截断近似,得到了氧化物正电荷影响下两种类型半导体内电势的近似解析解。另外,还进行了精确数值计算,并将它与近似解析解的结果进行比较,结果表明,当氧化物正电荷增加到使P型半导体发生强反型后,近似解不再成立。根据强反型的条件,给出了P型半导体中近似解的适用范围。     

氧化物正电荷影响下半导体空间电势的近似解析解研究

建立了半导体空间电势与界面氧化物正电荷之间联系的解析表达式。从一维情况下精确的泊松方程及其边界条件出发,对N（P）型硅半导体中的泊松方程作积累（耗尽）近似,根据德拜屏蔽效应对边界条件作截断近似,得到了氧化物正电荷影响下两种类型半导体内电势的近似解析解。另外,还进行了精确数值计算,并将它与近似解析解的结果进行比较,结果表明,当氧化物正电荷增加到使P型半导体发生强反型后,近似解不再成立。根据强反型的条件,给出了P型半导体中近似解的适用范围。     

Influence of relative humidity on the electrostatic charging of lactose powder mixed with salbutamol sulphate

In this study, electrostatic charging of lactose and its mixtures with salbutamol sulphate (SS) were studied as a function of relative humidity (RH). Powder adhesion onto a steel pipe surface was also investigated. The powders were charged by sliding in a steel pipe. Increase in RH decreased the charging of lactose and mixtures, but the effect on SS was not evident. Furthermore, the charge of the mixtures reversed from negative to positive as RH was increased and remained positive as the samples were again dried. Humidification also changed the adhesion behavior of the mixtures onto the pipe surface.     

Learning lessons from five electrostatic incidents

It is well known that electrostatic discharges can ignite mixtures of flammable gases with air and suspensions of combustible dust in air. For this reason, the prevention of electrostatic discharges is an essential part of measures to prevent explosions and fires. Incendive electrostatic discharges occurred in five cases in various chemical plants.The incidents involved were:

• 1.Spark type electrostatic discharges from a leaking steam pipe.
• 2.Spark type electrostatic discharges inside a charging chute for a solid.
• 3.A spark type electrostatic discharge whilst transferring a solid powder from a bin, which led to ignition of the powder.
• 4.A propagating brush discharge during pneumatic transfer of solid, which caused a severe electric shock to a process operator.
• 5.A brush discharge inside an electrostatic precipitator which caused ignition of an aerosol of hydrocarbon.

To avoid explosions and fires it is important to prevent incendive electrostatic discharges from occurring in industrial facilities. To help managers of chemical plants to do this, the incidents above are presented in the form of learning lessons including:

• •the mechanism of the generation and separation of electrical charges,
• •the mechanism of the electrostatic discharge,
• •the root causes of the incident,
• •the safety measures which are necessary to avoid a repetition.

     

Novel electrostatic attraction from plasmon fluctuations

In this Letter, we show that, at low temperatures, zero-point fluctuations of the plasmon modes of two mutually coupled 2D planar Wigner crystals give rise to a novel long-range attractive force. For the case where the distance d between two planar surfaces is large, this attractive force has an unusual power-law decay, which scales as d(-7/2), unlike other fluctuation-induced forces. Specifically, we note that its range is longer than the "standard" zero-temperature van der Waals interaction. This result may, in principle, be observed in bilayer electronic systems and provides insight into the nature of correlation effects for highly charged surfaces.