A Study of a Powder Coating Gun Near Field: Particle Flow in an Isothermal Staggered Concentric Air Jet

An experimental study of inert particle dispersion in an isothermal concentric air jet near field was conducted for cases of standard non-staggered and alternative staggered jet nozzles, each taken from a polymer powder flame deposition gun. The experimental work consisted of analysis of high speed digital images of the inert two phase isothermal jet flow, illuminated by a laser light sheet along and across the jet axis. The analysis of particle spread in the jet, represented by families of particle density distributions, clearly showed that the staggered nozzles resulted in a better-focused flow, with narrower distributions in the near field, and in the elimination of the recirculation zone that disrupted the particle flow in a non-staggered nozzle arrangement. In all cases, histograms of the cross-sectional particle area density were found to be approximately Gaussian. It was also found that there was a wide variation in the size and shape of the ground polymer particles used and these two characteristics caused a wide variation in the radial and axial velocities of the particles. Despite the differences between single-phase numerical simulations and experimental results, reported in Payne et al. [1], the introduction of particles into a numerical model produced satisfactory agreement with the particle velocities found experimentally.