10. Radiation and Laminar Forced Convection Heat Transfer During a Vehicle’s Paint Curing Process

Painting a vehicle involves several layers such as electrocoating that is applied to the virgin metal body, primer, base coat, clear coat, sealants and structural adhesives. In order to achieve the best paint performance, each layer of paint has to be cured in a bake oven according to paint supplier’s bake temperature versus time specifications. Accurate control of bake temperature versus time specifications is critical to the performance of a coating both physically and cosmetically. During the baking process, complete cross linking of the paint has to be achieved. In the present example, let us investigate a paint curing bake oven where heat is supplied to a particular vehicle’s painted body by hot air flow, i.e. by laminar forced convection heat transfer and by infrared radiation heat transfer lamps.