New Insights into Coating Uniformity and Base Sheet Structures

Base sheet structures, such as surface roughness and mass density distribution (formation), have been known to affect coating uniformity. However, the literature is not necessarily consistent in determining which structure controls coating uniformity. This study employed scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and image analysis, combined with autocorrelation and frequency analyses, to investigate the fundamental mechanisms of coating and to resolve some of the controversies in the literature regarding the base sheet effects. The results showed that coating thickness variation resembles a process of random deposition with leveling. At small length scales (in the size of fiber width), leveling causes a very strong dependence of coating thickness variations on the surface profile of the base sheet, whereas at larger length scales, coating thickness variation diminishes in its intensity by the same leveling effect, but still retains a significant correlation with base sheet structure, particularly formation. Frequency analyses clearly showed that the discrepancies in the results for the base sheet effects in the literature are due to the length scales used in the experiments, that is, the sampling area and the resolution of the measurements.