Effects of Compatibilizer and Airflow Field on the Formation of Helical Microfibers via Melt Blowing

Abstract

We explore the approaches to improving the fabrication of melt‐blown helical microfibers, which have found the applications in sorption and filtration due to their unique morphology and excellent properties. To explore the effect of compatibilizer on the formation of helical microfiber, polypropylene (PP), polyurethane (TPU), and PP grafted with maleic anhydride (PP‐g‐MAH) are melt blown to fabricate microfibrous nonwovens. The results of rheological test and differential scanning calorimetry show that the addition of PP‐g‐MAH helps to increase the miscibility of the PP/TPU blends. Two die configurations are used to study the effect of airflow filed on the formation of helical microfibers. The computational fluid dynamics simulation results show that the modified swirl die intensifies the swirling strength of the melt blowing airflow. The addition of compatibilizer and modification of the airflow field both benefit the formation of helical microfibers from polymer blends. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2019, 57, 1423–1433

Fabrication of stretchable and high‐filtration performance melt‐blown nonwoven webs for PM0.3 aerosol filtration

“…The amount of PP‐G‐mA is another factor that would affect the PP‐TPU blend characteristics. The effect of different amounts of PP maleic anhydride (PP‐g‐MAH) in the PP/TPU blend was studied by Li et al 17 It was noted that an increment in the PP‐g‐MAH directly resulted in enhancing melt‐viscosity attributed to a reduction in polymer chain mobility at the interface between PP and PP‐g‐MAH. More importantly, too low contents of PP‐G‐mA would result in a reduction in the mechanical properties of the PP‐TPU blend most likely due to the less compatibilization capacity.…”

Progress of air flow field and fiber motion analysis in textile manufacturing process: a review

“…Sun and Wang 96 optimized the structural parameters of the slot die, slot width, slot angle, nose piece width, and setback using a genetic algorithm combined with CFD to obtain the structural parameters at the highest hysteresis temperature. The only evaluation index in the 92 (h) schwarz die; 93 (i) laval nozzle; 83 (j) flow velocity cloud after the addition of auxiliary air flow; 85 (k) schwarz die flow field 93 and (l) add laval nozzle flow field. 83 study was the static temperature, and the effect of fibers on the flow field was not considered.…”

Influence of molecular weight, temperature, and extensional rheology on melt blowing process stability for linear isotactic polypropylene

“…However, the online version of record will be different from this version once it has been copyedited and typeset. 7 (b) in [54] (see supplementary material [45]) 29 e digitized from the histogram visualized in Figure 6 in [55] (see supplementary material [45]) f taken from the Figure 3 in [16] g taken from the Figure 8.13 in [59] Figure 1 Scheme of the meltblown process. [62,63] This is the author's peer reviewed, accepted manuscript.…”