A new model for the blown film process

Abstract

Polymer films are generally manufactured by film blowing. In this process the polymer (a polyethylene for example) is molten in a screw extruder and forced into a tubular die (typical dimensions are several decimeters in diameter and about one mm in thickness). At extrusion, it forms a liquid tube which is simultaneously drawn in the vertical direction by nip rolls, inflated by an internal pressure and cooled by external air rings. Typical dimensions of the bubble at take up are 1 m or more in diameter and several 10 μm in thickness. From a mechanical point of view, it is an extensional thin layer flow. Readers not familiar with this process will find easily pictures and schematic descriptions with a web research using keywords blown film extrusion. In order to simplify, it is assumed that the temperature profile is known and that the molten polymer behaves as a Newtonian fluid. This crude rheological behavior allows to capture qualitatively an important part of observed phenomena. The classical model introduced by Pearson and Petrie in 1970 is based on three hypothesis: the polymer flow in air is steady and axisymmetric and the film is thin. It uses a tangent frame affixed to the membrane to describe kinematics and to compute stress and strain tensors. In this model the balance equations are written using a stretching force and a curvature equation. It results in a nonlinear system of differential equations for velocity, thickness, radius and stress components according to distance z to extrusion. Solution is then computed using a tedious shooting method to determine force and internal pressure. For stability reasons this system of equations is solved from take up to extrusion. In this Note we derive also balance equations according to a curvilinear abscissa s. It allows us to derive a coupled system of equations for velocity and geometry according to radius r. This strategy which is classically used to determine surfaces of revolution with given mean curvature is rather disconcerting to compute a stretching flow in z direction. However it leads to a model constituted of two coupled equations: • Velocity is then solution of a Dirichlet boundary value problem of order two easily solved using a finite elements method; • The profile curve of the bubble is solution of a highly nonlinear differential equation of order one leading to a singular integral. Internal pressure appears as a parameter allowing to impose an additional boundary condition. Despite the fact that the computation of the solution remains technical, this new model seems more natural from a mathematical point of view as it leads, on the one hand, to an elliptic equation to compute velocity, and on the other hand, to an equation of a classical type in differential geometry to determine the generatrix.