Abstract
A tumble dryer is a rotating heated vessel used to fulfil a poly-condensation process of PETgranules. This step is very crucial in the entire production process of polymer fibres. System failure, causingproduction loss, cannot be afforded. Unfortunately, since a couple of years, the reactors suffer from severecracking at weld details. To find the root cause(s) of this problem a detailed study of the vesselconstruction, the loads induced during the production process and the cracking has been performed.Hereby the influencing parameters and their importance could be determined. Based on this study it is putforward that fatigue, due to the exceptional translation of the granules in the vessel, is responsible for thecracking of the tumble dryer. Two main loading modes and corresponding crack locations could bedetermined: a cyclic changing torque causes the cracks on the outside of the vessel while the dynamic playof the moving granules around the heating elements is responsible for the cracks at the inside the tumbledryer. The root cause of the cracking problem has been determined but the actual mechanism causing thecracks, still needs to be quantified.
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