The achievement of a balanced flow is one of the major tasks encompassed in the design of profile extrusion dies [1]. For this purpose numerical modeling codes may be a very useful aid. The research team involved in this work has been working during the last decade on the development of numerical tools to aid the conception of extrusion dies [1,2]. The design code developed so far carries out the automatic search of a final geometry via an optimization routine coupled with geometry and mesh generators and a 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code based on the finite volume method (FVM). This CFD code is able to model the flow of polymer melts in confined channels, but is inadequate to deal with complex geometries, since it is limited to structured meshes. This work describes the recent efforts made to enlarge the scope of the design procedures, that are currently focused on the development of a modeling code able to deal with unstructured meshes. This code solves the continuity and linear momentum conservation equations, with generalized Newtonian fluids, using a SIMPLE based approach. This paper describes the developed numerical modelling code and its employment in a case study that involves the design of a medical catheter extrusion die, focused on the search of a balanced flow distribution. The results obtained show that the developed numerical code is able to deal with complex geometrical problems, being thus a valuable tool to aid the design of extrusion dies to produce complex profiles.

A computer code, that couples numerical modelling and optimization routines, is described and used to automatically optimize the performance of a multi-step calibration stage of a plastic profile extrusion line. The objective of the optimization process is to minimize two conflicting criteria: final plastic profile average temperature and corresponding distribution standard deviation, both computed at the end of the calibration/cooling stage. The optimization routine uses Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEA). Having in mind the well-known difficulties in characterizing the interface heat transfer coefficient, the system optimization was performed using different constant values for this parameter.

The continuous polymerization of e-caprolactone initiated by titanium phenoxide was carried out in both an internal mixer and a twin-screw extruder. The polymerization was performed under different processing conditions, including various temperatures and screw speeds. To perform a kinetic study, samples were collected along the time axis (internal mixer) and along the screw axis (extruder). Size exclusion chromatography and proton nuclear magnetic resonance were used to study the evolution of the conversion degree with mixing time and with the extruder. The rheological behavior was also characterized. Temperature had a strong effect on conversion in the internal mixer, whereas in the twin-screw extruder, both temperature and screw speed played major roles. The specificity of the titanium phenoxide to lead to highmolar-mass poly(e-caprolactone) under these processing conditions was also confirmed.

Confined impinging jets (CIJs) are reactors used in processes that require fast mixing. In such equipment two fluids are injected from opposite sides of a chamber, impinging into each other and forming flow structures that enable an effective mixing and reaction. The turbulence analysis shows that the energy is injected from smaller scales, having approximately the injectors width, that feed larger scale structures up to larger vortices that occupy the entire mixing chamber width. This energy distribution has an inverse energy cascade, i. e. it is an inversion of the traditional description of homogeneous 3D turbulence. The typical flow scales of 2D CIJs are clearly shown in this work to be linked to the 2D turbulence energy spectrum and to integral scales of turbulence. Moreover, the turbulence mechanisms in 3D CIJs at transitional flow regimes are shown to be similar to 2D CIJs. This is to our knowledge the first demonstration of 2D turbulence in an industrial mixer/reactor. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 2335–2347, 2017

In this work, the optimization of an extrusion die designed for the production of a wood-plastic composite (WPC) decking profile is investigated. The optimization was performed with the help of numerical tools, more precisely, by solving the continuity and momentum conservation equations that govern such flow, and aiming to balance properly the flow distribution at the extrusion die flow channel outlet. To capture the rheological behavior of the material, we used a Bird-Carreau model with parameters obtained from a fit to the (shear viscosity versus shearrate) experimental data, collected from rheological tests. To yield a balanced output flow, several numerical runs were performed by adjusting the flow restriction at different regions of the flow-channel parallel zone crosssection. The simulations were compared with the experimental results and an excellent qualitative agreement was obtained, allowing, in this way, to attain a good balancing of the output flow and emphasizing the advantages of using numerical tools to aid the design of profile extrusion dies. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:1849-1855, 2015