Simulation of Spray Painting in Automotive Industry

Paint and surface treatment processes in the car paint shop are to a large extent automated and performed by robots. Having access to tools that incorporate the flexibility of robotic path planning with fast and efficient simulation of the processes is important to reduce the time required for introduction of new car models, reduce the environmental impact and increase the quality. The combination of high physical complexity, large moving geometries, and demands on near real time results constitutes a big challenge. We have developed an immersed boundary octree flow solver, IBOFlow, based on algorithms for coupled simulations of multiphase and free surface flows, electromagnetic fields, and particle tracing. The solver is included in an in-house package for automatic path planning, IPS. The major improvement of computational speed compared to other approaches is partly due to the use of grid-free methods which in addition simplifies preprocessing.