Modeling and Analysis of Polypropylene Fiber Extrusion Process

Abstract

Extrusion processes are widely used in plastic industries aiming to produce advanced solutions for increasingly sophisticated demands for plastics.Processes are not designed based on professional engineering design, but on trial and error techniques, which may complicate and/or negatively affect the extrusion processing parameters. In this study focus was concentrated on the parameters incorporated in Polypropylene Fiber extrusion process such as: screw length, screw diameter, metering zone length and flight depth. A model equations were derived based on abstracted standard equations considering the swelling occurs for the extruded fibers and the tensile drawing of fiber. Authenticated design parameters were derived and a model useful to simulate any given extrusion process successfully was resulted in a form of computer software system using C# language. The model was checked against manual calculations and gives comparable results for almost all parameters in addition to that, the model proves reliability, accuracy, high speed and integrity. Output data was useful for industrial design and operational setup and it can be further enhanced for future development and diversity conditions.