Abstract
Electrodeposition painting can deposit paint film not only on the exterior surface but also on the interior of an object and has excellent corrosion resistance. It is therefore widely used as anti-corrosion painting for automobiles. However, on the inner sides of vehicle bodies where structural materials overlap each other, it is difficult to deposit paint and in some cases the film thickness is insufficient. Although there are solutions to this problem, including adding holes and making other changes to the vehicle body structure, such structural changes after prototype production would incur significant cost and man-hours.
In order to solve these problems, we have developed a simulation technology for predicting film thickness in electrodeposition painting for vehicle bodies by using generic mesh generating software and an electrodeposition analysis solver. We compared the results of analysis using this technology with the actual paint film thickness, and confirmed that the predicted thickness and the actual thickness are almost exactly the same, and hence the prediction accuracy of the analysis is sufficiently high. This technology is already being used in developing vehicles, and realizes the reduction of development time.
Keywords: electrodeposition, painting, computer simulation, vehicle body, film thickness