Deposition Modeling for Paint Application on Surfaces Embedded in for use in Automated Trajectory

Aspart of an ongoingcollaborativeeffort with theFord Motor Company, our resear ch aimsto develop practical andefficient trajectoryplanningtools for automotivepainting. Not only mustthepaint applicator passover all pointson the surface, it mustdo so in a mannerthat ensures the uniformity of the coating thickness.Thisis non-trivial giventhecomplexity of automotivesurfaces.Thisreportdocumentsour efforts to developanalyticdepositionmodelsfor electrostaticrotating bell (ESRB)atomizer s, which haverecently becomewidely usedin the automotivepainting industry. Conventionaldepositionmodels,usedin earlier automatictrajectoryplanningtools,fail to capture thecomplexity of depositionpatternsgeneratedbyESRB atomizer s. Themodelspresentedheretakeinto accountboththesurfacecurvatureandthedepositionpattern of ESRBatomizer s, enablingplanning tools to optimizeatomizertrajectoriesto meetseveral measur esof quality, such ascoatinguniformity. In addition to thedevelopmentof our models,wepresentexperimental resultsusedto evaluateour models,andverify theinteractionbetweenthedepositionpattern,trajectory, and surfacecurvature.