Taguchi Design and Analysis of 3D-Computer Fluid Dynamic (CFD) Experiments (TDACE) for the Optimization of Air-Cap Configuration in Arc Spraying

Abstract

Abstract The computational fluid dynamic approach is adopted in this work, using L16-Taguchi matrix, to study the effect of different secondary atomization gas outlet configurations on the gas velocity, jet divergence, and pressure distribution at cap outlet. The spraying process variables that are integrated in this study are primary and secondary atomization gas pressure, PG and SG respectively. In addition, the geometrical variables of the SG air-cap like the position, the number and the angle of the outlet holes for SG are a part of the L16-Taguchi matrix. The effect of the process variables and geometrical design variations are analyzed on the obtained gas flow characteristics. Increasing the number of the SG outlet holes leads to a higher gas velocity at the cap outlet. The amount and the angle of the SG outlet holes have a direct effect on the plume divergence. The SG outlet angle determines the distance between the flow intersection point (PG-flow and SG-flow) and the air-cap outlet. Increasing the SG outlet angle leads to a reduction of the gas velocity. The use of Design of Experiment (DoE) in the optimization of the air-cap design by implementing CFD-simulation was proved to be a very useful and efficient tool to design high performance air-caps of twin-wire arc-spraying.