Validation of a numerical model for the simulation of an electrostatic powder coating process

Numerical modeling of a complete powder coating process is carried out to understand the gas-particle two-phase flow field inside a powder coating booth and results of the numerical simulations are compared with experimental data to validate the numerical results. The flow inside the coating booth is modeled as a three-dimensional turbulent continuous gas flow with solid powder particles as a discrete phase. The continuous gas flow is predicted by solving Navier–Stokes equations using a standard k–ε turbulence model with non-equilibrium wall functions. The discrete phase is modeled based on a Lagrangian approach. In the calculation of particle propagation, a particle size distribution obtained through experiments is applied. The electrostatic field, including the effect of space charge due to free ions, is calculated with the use of the user defined scalar transport equations and user defined scalar functions in the software package, FLUENT, for the electrostatic potential and charge density.