Hydrodynamics of Polymer in a Single Screw Extruder under Unsteady State Reaction

Abstract

Extrusion is the most important polymer processing operation. This paper focuses on obtaining an analytical solution for describing transient polymer movement and heat and mass transfer in the zone of polymer melting delay. The coupled nonlinear partial differential equations describing the phenomenon have been decoupled using the perturbation method and solved analytically using Eigenfunction expansion technique. The results obtained revealed that the Reynolds number and Eckert number have significant effects on the velocies, polymer temperature and mass flow rate.