Abstract
This study conducts a comprehensive numerical evaluation of conjugate heat transfer in an automotive paint oven to optimize the performance and increase the overall energy efficiency. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis of parameters in an automotive paint oven and on the coated vehicle surface is essential to achieve better paint quality and manufacturability, although the complicated geometry of vehicles, transient nature of the procedure, varying scales of the flow, and the tightly coupled conjugate heat transfer make the modeling difficult. An efficient computational algorithm, under the framework of the OpenFOAM package, using the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) turbulence model is implemented to numerically model the unsteady heated airflow behavior in the paint curing process. The conjugate heat transfer solver, chtMultiRegionFoam, is validated by heat sink case examination as heat transfer benchmark and then employed for the oven modeling. According to simulation results, the applied low-cost optimization of the intake hot flow rate and small oven geometry variation achieved significant energy efficiency improvement. During the optimization, the fluid dynamic characteristics, e.g., the mean temperature, velocity and streamline patterns, across all six zones of the oven, as well as the temperature and velocity map on a Body in White (BiW), are examined. The optimized arrangement and position of nozzles and panels for transient heat transfer processing of curing along the oven is described. Increasing the heated air provided by the panels on the lower half of the oven improves airflow circulation, resulting in a significant increment in the computed car body temperature.
