<p> This thesis investigates the characteristics of noise generation in the gas wiping process, including the effects of the various parameters manipulated in the process and countermeasures used to reduce noise levels. The process of gas wiping is used in many industrial applications such as drying of pulp and paper, photograph production and some high performance cooling applications. One of the most important industrial applications of gas wiping is the production of hot-dipped galvanized sheet steel. Gas wiping is a very efficient and reliable process to control coating thickness and uniformity of galvanized steel products, and can be used for very high line speeds and production rates. Changing the various process parameters such as the jet to strip distance (z), the jet slot width (h), plenum pressure (P) and jet inclination angle (α) allows manufacturers to control the coating thickness and quality of the finished product.</p> <p> The gas wiping process is also responsible for the generation of very high levels of noise, which can be a factor in limiting the overall production rates and indirectly increase production costs for manufacturers. To maintain a constant coating thickness as the line speed and production rate is increased, the plenum pressure supplied to the jets and thus the incident jet velocity must be increased, or the jet-to-strip distance must be decreased. Noise production in the gas wiping process is acknowledged to be proportional to the incident jet velocity and inversely proportional to the jet-to-strip distance. Thus, for a given coating thickness, as the production rates increase, the noise
generated by the process must also increase. Ergonomic restrictions in the workplace, which limit the exposure to high sound pressure levels and audible acoustic tones, may indirectly limit the maximum line speed for a steel sheet with a given coating thickness. This limitation is particularly relevant to the production of high quality automotive sheet steels, which often have very thin coating thicknesses and have higher than normal coating uniformity tolerances, which necessitate the use of high plenum pressures and small jet-to-strip distances.</p> <p> At present, the state of knowledge for noise generation in the gas wiping process
is very limited. Only two previous investigations have been devoted to this problem, and the experiments for these studies have only modeled specific individual cases, with no attempt at a comprehensive modeling of noise in this process. For the current study, measurements have been performed in both an actual manufacturing environment and on a scaled galvanizing simulator in a laboratory environment. A comprehensive set of experiments over a wide range of gas wiping parameters was performed in order to provide a broad overview of noise generation in the gas wiping process and allow for process optimization to reduce noise and allow higher production rates and efficiency. The creation of noise maps, modeling the overall sound pressure level and tone intensity for gas wiping as function of the various operating parameters of the process, as well as a set of equations and models to determine the frequency of discrete acoustic tones are presented. A full analysis of the frequency response, as well as the acoustic modes generated in various jet impingement regions has also been provided.</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/22480 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Arthurs, David |
| Contributors | Ziada, Samir, Mechanical Engineering |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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