Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.52, No.12, 4597-4605, 2013
Investigation on a New Annular Melt-Blowing Die Using Numerical Simulation
In this study, a new annular melt-blowing die with an inner stabilizing piece was designed to obtain finer fibers and consume less energy than for the common annular die. The effects of the new annular die design on the velocity field, temperature field, and turbulence fluctuation field at the die centerline were investigated using numerical simulation. The simulation results reveal that, compared with the corresponding annular die, the new annular die decreases the negative velocity in the recirculation zone, enhances the mean velocity along the centerline, slows the temperature decay of the flow field, and reduces the velocity fluctuations of the air flow near the outlet of the polymer capillary. In the local region, the centerline turbulence intensity for the new annular die is stronger than that for the corresponding annular die, but the difference is not large.