An Assessment of the Effects of Micron-Particle Aggregation on the Performance of Zinc-Silica Composite Coatings Using Betti Numbers

Abstract

This paper investigates the assessment of the mixing effect of zinc-silica composite electrolyte using particle image velocimetry (PIV). In particular, we considered the deposition of silica particles using a stirring tank, which provides strong evidence for characterizing the mixing effects of flow field. A method to extract meaningful parameters to evaluate particle distribution from digital images recorded by the PIV technique during the electrodeposition process is applied. The Betti numbers of binary images of silica particles mixing were calculated using the CHomP software, which was used to evaluate mixing homogeneity and nonhomogeneity in flow field. An analysis of the performance of zinc-silica composite coatings is performed in an attempt to test and verify the assessment of the effects of micron-particle aggregation. Good correlations between calculated and experimental testing results illustrate the potential of the Betti numbers method to quantitatively evaluate micron-particle aggregation. This offers new possibilities to monitor the deposition of silica particles and to analyze flow field during the electrodeposition progress.

An original technique for quantifying the flow-field characteristics in an electrodeposition process of Zn-SiO2 with Fe

“…For the sake of employing similar materials, some more details of experimental setup for electrodeposition and design parameters with different levels are present in Ref. [36,35]. As listed in above references, four different parameter, including the distance between the cross section tested by PIV and cathode s (unit: cm), stirring rate v (unit: rpm), electric current I (unit: A) and the height of paddle h (unit: cm),were used to investigate the blend homogeneity in the Zn-Fe-SiO 2 electrodeposition process.…”

“…It is obviously that the former case exhibits better mixing uniformity than the other one. In order to further verify the degree of correctness of the procedure of novel statistical evaluation, several 160 measurements have been conducted with the assistance of electron probe testing, a magnetic thickness tester, and an erosion test [37,35]. Closer inspection on Fig.…”