Behrang Mohajer^1*, Chul B. Park^1*, Markus Bussmann^2*

1 Microcellular Plastics Manufacturing Laboratory (MPML), Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto

2 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto

* Corresponding authors emails: bmohajer@mie.utoronto.ca, park@mie.utoronto.ca, bussman@mie.utoronto.ca

DOI10.24435/materialscloud:54-2z [version v1]

Publication date: May 21, 2025

How to cite this record

Behrang Mohajer, Chul B. Park, Markus Bussmann, Computational optimization of a drafter for spunbonding polymeric filaments, Materials Cloud Archive 2025.79 (2025), https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:54-2z

Description

This study presents a computational model to enhance the spunbonding drafter's performance. The existing design exhibits a significant risk of fiber breakage. To address this issue, an OpenFOAM computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver is employed to simulate the airflow over the base geometry and its modified configurations following various design alterations. The collected data are analyzed for predefined optimization objectives: (a) maximize shear drag and thus draw on the filaments, (b) achieve maximum drawing uniformity, and (c) minimize the pressurized air consumption rate. These goals are set to produce more uniform filaments, reduce the breakage risk, and improve energy efficiency. We vary seven design parameters, ran many CFD simulations, and recommend a few enhancements for a drafter based on those. We identify a "braking effect" on the filaments and find that geometry significantly affects the internal airflow and, thus, the drawing process. Based on our findings, we propose widening the drafter, linearly diverging the walls at the lower section, linearly converging the walls at half of the upper section, and introducing an extensible length for drawing precision control.

Materials Cloud sections using this data

Files

File name	Size	Description
replication of work.zip MD5md5:902248a99a53690a01efbdf41bb5125f	8.4 MiB	Sample test cases to alter the geometry and run CFD

License

Files and data are licensed under the terms of the following license: MIT License.
Metadata, except for email addresses, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International license.

External references

No external references available for this Materials Cloud Archive record.

Keywords

spunbonding drafter drawing polymer OpenFOAM CFD Shear drag uniformity