Air-knife design for improved drying efficiency in manufacturing flat-panel displays

Abstract

Abstract With the growing demand for flat-panel displays (FPDs), the size and production conveyance speed of glass are increasing to improve productivity. Improvement of productivity, speed, and efficiency in the drying process used in FPD manufacturing has become an important issue. Therefore, this study aims to improve the drying efficiency by optimizing the primary design variables of an air knife, the most common FPD drying system, through numerical analysis. To optimize the air-knife design, the feasible optimal values were fixed for the slit gap (0.15 mm) and glass gap (1.5 mm), and the optimized dimensions were determined by considering the nonsymmetric distance (0.5 mm) and installation angle (15°) of the end geometry of the air knife channel. The optimized air-knife design improved the drying efficiency by approximately 30% compared to that of the existing system; therefore, it can increase the productivity of the FPD manufacturing process.