Shaping Air Flow Characteristics of a High-Speed Rotary-Bell Sprayer for Automotive Painting Processes

Electrostatic rotary bell sprayers (ERBS) are widely used in automotive painting applications. These processes involve complex airflows to shape paint sprays and transport droplets toward automotive parts to be coated. Despite the importance of shaping airflow on global spray characteristics, a detailed characterization of this aerodynamic flow is still missing. For this purpose, an experimental study was conducted on the influence of some ERBS operating parameters on the development and characteristics of shaping airflow. Results show that, for low swirl numbers, the flow behavior is close to that of annular swirling jets and a good agreement is found between ERBS flow characteristics and data available in literature. When rotational speed of the bell cup is sufficiently fast, a change of regime is observed with a shift in the longitudinal flow development and an increase of recirculation zone length. This change of regime is attributed to vortex breakdown instability, known to occur when high swirl strength is beyond a critical value. Experimental results obtained in this study put forward a clear link between the shaping air flow rate and the rotation frequency on the aerodynamics and also provide valuable leads to design shaping air flow in modern ERBS.