Study of blade coating using hyperbolic tangent nanofluid model with slip effects on the coating thickness and blade load

Blade coating is a reliable and efficient coating process widely used in various industries, including paper, textile and paint manufacturing, making it a popular choice for achieving uniform coating thickness. This paper investigates the blade coating process using a hyperbolic tangent nanofluid model, incorporating slip effects. The two dimensional flow equations governing the blade coating process are formulated based on the fundamental laws of fluid dynamics. These equations are simplified using normalized variables and Lubrication Approximation Theory. The coupled non-linear differential equations are solved using MATLAB’s built-in function “bvp4c” in combination with false position method (Regula-Falsi method) are used to solve the coupled non-linear differential equations. This study analyzes the effects of the slip parameter, Weissenberg number (We) and other material parameters on the key performance indicators such as, coating thickness ( h 1 ), blade load, velocity, temperature, concentration, and pressure profiles, through different graphs and tables. The theoretical result indicates that when the slip parameter (β) is 0.04, the coating thickness increases by 3.03% for the plane coater and 2.95% for the exponential coater. Simultaneously, the blade load decreases by 6.74% for the plane coater and 6.83% for the exponential coater, compared to the Newtonian fluid case.