Extrudate swell of linear and branched polyethylenes: ALE simulations and comparison with experiments

Extrudate swell is a common phenomenon observed in the polymer extrusion industry. Accurate prediction of the dimensions of an extrudate is important for appropriate design of dies for profile extrusion applications. Prediction of extrudate swell has been challenging due to (i) difficulties associated with accurate representation of the constitutive behavior of polymer melts, and (ii) difficulties associated with the simulation of free surfaces, which requires special techniques in the traditionally used Eulerian framework. In a previous work we had argued that an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) based finite element formulation may have advantages in simulating free surface deformations such as in extrudate swell. In the present work we reinforce this argument by comparing our ALE simulations with experimental data on the extrudate swell of commercial grades of linear polyethylene (LLDPE) and branched polyethylene (LDPE). Rheological behavior of the polymers was characterized in shear and uniaxial extensional deformations, and the data was modeled using either the Phan–Thien Tanner (PTT) model or the eXtended Pom–Pom (XPP) model. Additionally, flow birefringence and pressure drop measurements were done using a 10:1 contraction–expansion (CE) slit geometry in a MultiPass Rheometer. Simulated pressure drop and contours of the principal stress difference were compared with experimental data and were found to match well. This provided an independent test for the accuracy of the ALE code and the constitutive equations for simulating a processing-like flow. The polymers were extruded from long (L/D = 30) and short (L/D = 10) capillaries dies at 190 °C. ALE simulations were performed for the same extrusion conditions and the simulated extrudate swell showed good agreement with the experimental data.     

液晶高分子-各向异性流体挤出拉伸分岔研究

应用共转导数型本构方程研究了液晶高分子纺丝挤出过程的拉伸黏度,应用计算机符号运算软件 Maple得出解析表达式,拉伸黏度与拉伸率之间关系(随剪切速率变化)表明存在分岔现象,得出拉伸黏度显著高于相应的剪切黏度,解释了液晶高分子熔体挤出时不发生挤出胀大的物理机制．     

基于ALE方法的3D充填流动模拟

基于任意拉格朗日-欧拉方法发展了三维充填流动的数值模拟方案.该方案采用ALE方法准确地追踪移动自由面的位置并避免了网格扭曲;基于移动最小二乘曲面拟合方法提出了移动自由面上网格节点重定位方法,将充填流动的网格更新过程简化为自由面附近的局部网格重划分过程,并通过分级多面体三角剖分实现,减小了网格划分的计算量,实现了实时网格生成.给出的数值算例结果表明了该数值模型对三维充填流动模拟的有效性.     

Delayed mesh relaxation for multi-material ALE formulation

Multi-Material Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) finite element methods can solve large deformations in fast dynamic problems like explosions because the mesh motion can be independent of the material motion. However materials must flow between elements and this advection involves numerical dissipations. The rezoning mesh method presented in this paper was designed to reduce these numerical errors for shock wave propagation. The mesh moves to refine the elements near the shock front. This refinement limits the advection fluxes and so the numerical diffusion. This technique is applied to the numerical simulations of airblast problems for which a parameter controlling the mesh refinement is studied.     

A fully discrete ALE method over untwisted time–space control volumes

In this paper, a fully discrete high‐resolution arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) method is developed over untwisted time–space control volumes. In the framework of the finite volume method, 2D Euler equations are discretized over untwisted moving control volumes, and the resulting numerical flux is computed using the generalized Riemann problem solver. Then, the fluid flows between meshes at two successive time steps can be updated without a remapping process in the classic ALE method. This remapping‐free ALE method directly couples the mesh motion into a physical variable update to reflect the temporal evolution in the whole process. An untwisted moving mesh is generated in terms of the vorticity‐free part of the fluid velocity according to the Helmholtz theorem. Some typical numerical tests show the competitive performance of the current method. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

自由活塞压缩管ALE方法数值模拟

当前国际上实现高焓气体流动的实验手段之一是自由活塞驱动类脉冲设备,包括自由活塞激波风洞和自由活塞膨胀管.采用自由活塞压缩管作为激波风洞和膨胀管的驱动段时,其驱动能力在很大程度上决定了该类设备的性能.本文采用计算流体力学中任意拉格朗日——欧拉方法(arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian)数值模拟了压缩管内部的自由活塞运动和气体流动特征.采用移动网格技术来适应活塞运动边界,耦合求解网格运动和气体流动过程,并通过双时间步长方法进行流体运动的时间积分.为了满足几何守恒律(geometric conservation law),对移动网格的法向矢量和表面面积计算进行了修正.不同时刻的活塞位置试验测量结果及欧拉方法预测结果,以及基于简单波理论获得的运动活塞底部气体压力、活塞速度与活塞位置都与当前的ALE方法十分一致.该工作为下一步数值模拟自由活塞激波风洞和自由活塞膨胀管中包括压缩管、激波管和喷管等不同部位的耦合流动提供了基础.      

Calculation of capillary jet

The Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) framework coupled with some boundary tracking techniques is proven to be an effective method for simulation of free‐surface flows. In this paper, a special ALE framework is derived with clarification of three velocities, the notion of mesh‐frozen and field‐frozen, and the notion of tentatively inertial coordinates. A weighted integral ALE governing equations are formulated on generic coordinates and discretized with a finite element method and linear implicit time scheme. The system is solved with a discrete operator splitting technique and superposition‐based logistic parallelization. The formulation and implementation are verified through several fixed‐geometry problems and a reasonably good parallel performance is observed. Capillary jet flow is the main problem of the paper and the numerical techniques for boundary tracking are elaborated, which include an indirect boundary tracking of flux method and an iterative direct boundary tracking method. Also, a high‐order compact scheme for dynamic boundary condition and a squeeze technique for kinematic boundary condition are adopted. The axisymmetric jet breakup is studied in detail and numerical results match with the published data very well. Numerical accuracy and sensitivity are studied, including effects of element type, time scheme, compact scheme, and boundary tracking techniques. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) formulation for free surface flows using the characteristic‐based split (CBS) scheme

An arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method for non‐breaking free surface flow problems is presented. The characteristic‐based split (CBS) scheme has been employed to solve the ALE equations. A simple mesh smoothing procedure based on coordinate averaging (Laplacian smoothing) is employed in the calculations. The mesh velocity is calculated at each time step and incorporated as part of the scheme. Results presented show an excellent agreement with the available experimental data. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

聚合物熔体三维挤出胀大的数值模拟

采用有限元方法分析K-BKZ本构方程描述的聚合物熔体的三维挤出胀大.对于本构方程中偏应力张量的计算,首先给出质点的运动轨迹,分段求出局部的变形梯度张量,再求出整体的变形梯度、Cauchy-Green应变张量和 Finger应变张量,沿轨迹采用分段高斯积分计算应力.把应力作为方程的右端项,给出迭代方法,求解非线性方程组.并根据自由面处的边界条件,迭代得出出口处自由面的最终位置.对轴对称流道和矩形流道进行分析计算,并把结果与二维分析和实验结果进行了比较,显示方法是可行的.     

A three‐dimensional vortex particle‐in‐cell method for vortex motions in the vicinity of a wall

A new vortex particle‐in‐cell method for the simulation of three‐dimensional unsteady incompressible viscous flow is presented. The projection of the vortex strengths onto the mesh is based on volume interpolation. The convection of vorticity is treated as a Lagrangian move operation but one where the velocity of each particle is interpolated from an Eulerian mesh solution of velocity–Poisson equations. The change in vorticity due to diffusion is also computed on the Eulerian mesh and projected back to the particles. Where diffusive fluxes cause vorticity to enter a cell not already containing any particles new particles are created. The surface vorticity and the cancellation of tangential velocity at the plate are related by the Neumann conditions. The basic framework for implementation of the procedure is also introduced where the solution update comprises a sequence of two fractional steps. The method is applied to a problem where an unsteady boundary layer develops under the impact of a vortex ring and comparison is made with the experimental and numerical literature. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation of liquid sloshing in curved‐wall containers with arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian method

There are many challenges in the numerical simulation of liquid sloshing in horizontal cylinders and spherical containers using the finite element method of arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) formulation: tracking the motion of the free surface with the contact points, defining the mesh velocity on the curved wall boundary and updating the computational mesh. In order to keep the contact points slipping along the curved side wall, the shape vector in each time advancement is defined to modify the kinematical boundary conditions on the free surface. A special function is introduced to automatically smooth the nodal velocities on the curved wall boundary based on the liquid nodal velocities. The elliptic partial differential equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions can directly rezone the inner nodal velocities in more than a single freedom. The incremental fractional step method is introduced to solve the finite element liquid equations. The numerical results that stemmed from the algorithm show good agreement with experimental phenomena, which demonstrates that the ALE method provides an efficient computing scheme in moving curved wall boundaries. This method can be extended to 3D cases by improving the technique to compute the shape vector. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Characteristics ALE Method for the Unsteady 3D Navier-Stokes Equations with a Free Surface

Because of its great adaptability, the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method is often used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations with a free surface. The kinematic condition relating the normal velocity to the mesh velocity suggests a simple way to move the domain, but it leads to unstable schemes in many cases. A method to take into account the non-linearity of the free surface is presented in this paper and integrated into a Finite Method with Galerkin characteristics. A variational form of the surface tension is used to overcome the difficulty of estimating the main curvature of the surface grid. A stability estimate is then established on the global scheme, under regularity conditions on the grid.     

An extended finite element method for the simulation of particulate viscoelastic flows

We present an extended finite element method (XFEM) for the direct numerical simulation of the flow of viscoelastic fluids with suspended particles. For moving particle problems, we devise a temporary arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) scheme which defines the mapping of field variables at previous time levels onto the computational mesh at the current time level. In this method, a regular mesh is used for the whole computational domain including both fluid and particles. A temporary ALE mesh is constructed separately and the computational mesh is kept unchanged throughout the whole computations. Particles are moving on a fixed Eulerian mesh without any need of re-meshing. For mesh refinements around the interface, we combine XFEM with the grid deformation method, in which nodal points are redistributed close to the interface while preserving the mesh topology. Our method is verified by comparing with the results of boundary fitted mesh problems combined with the conventional ALE scheme. The proposed method shows similar accuracy compared with boundary fitted mesh problems and superior accuracy compared with the fictitious domain method. If the grid deformation method is combined with XFEM, the required computational time is reduced significantly compared to uniform mesh refinements, while providing mesh convergent solutions. We apply the proposed method to the particle migration in rotating Couette flow of a Giesekus fluid. We investigate the effect of initial particle positions, the Weissenberg number, the mobility parameter of the Giesekus model and the particle size on the particle migration. We also show two-particle interactions in confined shear flow of a viscoelastic fluid. We find three different regimes of particle motions according to initial separations of particles.     

Mesh regularization for an ALE code based on the limitation of the Lagrangian mesh velocity

The Lagrangian approach is usually used for the simulation of flow with strong shock waves. Moreover, this approach is particularly well suited to treatment of material interfaces in the case of multimaterial flows.Unfortunately, this formulation leads to very large deformations in the mesh. The arbitrary Lagrangian‐Eulerian method overcomes this drawback by using a mesh regularization that is based on an analysis of cell geometry. The regularization step may be considered as a method used to correct the nonconvex and potentially tangled cells that constitute the mesh. In this paper, we present a new approach to mesh regularization. Instead of using a purely geometric criterion, we propose that the mesh evolution is computed on the basis of the flow vorticity. This approach is called the large Eddy limitation method, and it is aimed here to be used in finite volume direct arbitrary Lagrangian‐Eulerian methods. The large Eddy limitation method is general, which means that it is not restricted to applications in the finite volume framework dedicated to fluid flow simulation; for instance, it could also be naturally applied to the finite element framework.     

Numerical prediction of extrudate swell of branched polymer melts

This paper is concerned with the numerical prediction of the extrudate swell behaviour of branched polymer melts in a planar configuration. The multi-mode extended pom-pom (XPP) model is used to describe the polymer dynamics. A second-order operator-integration-factor splitting scheme is used for the temporal discretisation of the problem, whilst a spectral element scheme is used in space. The free surface is evolved in a Lagrangian manner using the third-order conditionally stable Adams–Bashforth method. A thorough mesh convergence study is performed with respect to the temporal and spatial discretisation parameters. The influence of the nature of the discrete relaxation spectrum on the swelling ratio and as an indicator of polydispersity is investigated. The predictions of numerical simulations are also compared with a selection of experimental results from the literature. The parameters in the XPP model are determined from rheological data. Good agreement is obtained for branched low-density polyethylenes. The ability to model a melt with a high molecular weight tail using a discrete relaxation spectrum for which the largest relaxation time is isolated from the others is also investigated.     

Quantitative evaluation of extrudate swell from viscoelastic properties of polystyrene

A theory of extrudate swell for short, intermediate or long dies is presented. In our experiment, we consider that the swelling phenomenon is mainly due to the recoverable elongational strain induced by the converging flow at the die entrance, as well as by recoverable shear strain originating within the die. From these concepts, an equation has been derived for the quantitative prediction of extrudate swell from the elastic material properties such as the entrance pressure drop, the relaxation modulus and the recoverable shear strain. Excellent agreement is found between predicted and measured values of extrudate swell obtained on commercial polystyrene melt, using capillaries of length-to-diameter ratios ranging from 1 to 20 and in a wide range of shear rates.     

成型充填过程的ALE有限元模拟

在ALE框架中提出了一个用于成型充填过程有限元数值模拟的模型。应用ALE参考构形及ALE参考粒子速度描写充填过程中的熔体质量运动。摒弃了Hele-Shaw近似假定,因而所提出的模型能用于非薄壁型腔中高分子材料充填过程的数值模拟。应用基于时域分步算法的Taylor-Galerkin方法,对控制成型充填过程的守恒方程建立了弱形式。对移动自由面附近的充填材料区构造了网格生成算法与网格重划分方案。给出了在几种不同形状的典型腔体中充填过程的数值模拟结果,表明了所提出的ALE有限元模型模拟充填过程的有效性。