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Numerical Simulation of Dynamic Flow in Four Screw Extruders Using 2D Finite Element Method with Particle Trajectories

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DOI: 10.23977/icamcs.2018.033

Author(s)

Junxue You, Xiangzhe Zhu

Corresponding Author

Junxue You

ABSTRACT

A novel rhombic-layout four screw extruder was designed based on the conventional twin-screw extruder. A numerical simulation of two-dimensional flow field in this four screw extruder, as well as in the twin screw extruder, was carried out using the finite element method (FEM) and the mesh superposition technique (MST) provided by the commercial CFD code, Polyflow. The purely viscous fluid was assumed to obey the Bird-Carreau constitutive model. On the basis of the velocity field, we used statistical post-processing software, Polystat, to calculate the typical mixing evaluation parameters, such as the time-averaged efficiency, instantaneous efficiency, logarithmic stretch and rate of dissipation in the four screw extruder, and compared the aforementioned parameters with the twin-screw extruder. Moreover, the advantages of four-screw extruder can be comprehensively analyzed in comparison with the twin screw extruder. Moreover, trajectories of the particle groups were captured easily, and the difference of dynamic characteristics between the four and twin screw extruder were employed from dynamic viewpoint. The results show that mixing is highly dependent on the initial position of the particles and that the four screw extruder had better distributive mixing ability than the conventional twin screw extruder.

KEYWORDS

Rhombic-layout four screw extruder, Numerical simulation, Mixing efficiency.

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