Melt Conveying in Co-rotating Twin Screw Extruders

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based on a finite-volume method was used to simulate three-dimensional pressure and velocity fields for non-Newtonian fluids in fully filled screw elements in a co-rotating twin screw extruder. The employed method also allows the calculation of temperature fields for non-isothermal flow which requires a non-steady state calculation.

The CFD code was first evaluated on simple flow cases such as flow of a Newtonian or non-Newtonian fluid through a cylindrical die or flow in single screw extruders equipped with different screws. The results agreed very well with analytical calculations (die flow) and experimental results (single screw extruder). In a next step, we wanted to establish the reliability of the numerical results for twin screw extruders by performing experiments on a 40 mm and a 58 mm screw diameter machine. Temperature and pressure distribution along the screw in the fully filled section in front of the die were measured. Melt conveying in several screw elements (different pitches) was studied for different materials (amorphous polystyrene and partially crystalline polypropylene) at various flow rates and screw speeds. It was attempted to measure axial pressure build-up for flow rates from nearly zero to beyond the drag capacity of the specific element. The measured bulk values of pressure were then compared to the corresponding values extracted from the CFD simulation results. So far, only isothermal calculations (at different temperatures) have been performed. The temperature profile along the screw was determined by calculating the energy dissipation in isothermal slices and converting the dissipated energy into internal energy (temperature increase, neglecting heat losses at the wall). General agreement between experimental and numerical results is good.