Flow induced birefringence study of vortices in LDPE polymer melt extrusion

Abstract

During polymer melts extrusion wide range of unstable phenomena (die drool, slip-stick, wall slip, melt fracture etc.) can occur. These instabilities significantly limit production rate and decrease final product quality. Due to significant viscoelastic nature of polymer melts, secondary flows (vortices) inside the processing tools can also occur. In these vortices, polymer melt slowly rotates which significantly extends residence time at high processing temperature. This can lead to unwanted thermal degradation. Contrary to majority of flow instabilities visually detected on extrudate surface, vortices are always hidden inside processing tools. Thus, the study of them can only be done through visualization cells and special experimental techniques mapping velocity fields (particle tracking or laser-Doppler velocimetry) or stress fields (flow induced birefringence). Despite vortices are stress induced instability, theirs study is commonly performed through velocity fields only, which is however not fundamentally correct. This work is focused on development of novel method for study of vortices in polymer melt extrusion based on flow induced birefringence. Testing of the proposed method has been done for LDPE Lupolen 1840H polymer melt. Vortex boundary obtained from stress field have been directly compared with velocity one visualized through rotating gel particle tracking. Effect of temperature and shear rate on vortex area have also been studied and successfully correlated with laser-Doppler velocity data available in open literature for the same polymer melt and similar processing conditions. © 2019 Society of Plastics Engineers. All rights reserved.