| The Center for Advanced
Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF), an NSF-funded Engineering Research
Center headquartered at Clemson University, is developing an experimentally
validated simulation of the primary stage of the cast film process commonly
used in industrial manufacturing of polymer films. Polymer films
have many applications, including food packaging and the stretch wrap that
secures materials on pallets.
The goal of the simulation
is to better understand the effects of material properties and processing
conditions on the resulting cast film. Proper design and control
of the primary processing steps helps engineers design films with improved
properties.
An interdisciplinary team
is developing a simulation that will soon be available as a module in Fiber
and Film Simulation, a software package known as FiSim developed at CAEFF
for modeling polymer processing. The simulation software returned
results similar to those of an experiment conducted on the CAEFF pilot-scale
film casting line when the processing parameters and other characteristics
were provided. Favorable comparisons were observed between simulation
and experiment for velocity, temperature, and film width.
This research illustrates
the material characterization/modeling/experimental validation paradigm
which CAEFF is successfully applying for the development of both conventional
and novel materials and processes. |
