Annually, large amounts of steel are galvanized to protect against corrosion and to increase its longevity. Robust and consistent galvanizing technologies are crucial to reduce the environmental impact of this process. This research studies the wetting behaviour of liquid zinc on steel, aiming to reduce contamination during galvanizing, leading to improved coating quality and ultimately, longer-lasting and more sustainable steel products.

Driven by the need to reduce the environmental impact of many industrial processes, this work focuses on improving our understanding of high-speed dynamic wetting. Dynamic wetting is commonly seen in industry, for example in immersion lithography, bearings, starved lubrication and dip coating processes like galvanizing, the latter being the focus of the project. Poor wetting leads to coating quality issues, resulting in a waste of resources. We will investigate dynamic wetting with both physical and numerical models to obtain insight into the mechanisms of contaminant entrainment during galvanizing.

The results will allow industry to improve their processes and process control and reduce waste using the validated (numerical/digital) process models developed in this research.