Nonlinear rotating viscoelastic jets during forcespinning process

Abstract

In the usual forcespinning (FS) process, a fluid jet is forced through an orifice of a rotating spinneret leading to the formation of a jet with curved centreline. In this paper, we investigate the properties of nonlinear viscoelastic jets during the FS process. We apply scaling and perturbation techniques to determine the modelling system for the viscoelastic jets, subjected to the Giesekus constitutive equations for the stress tensor. We calculate numerically the expressions for the nonlinear steady solutions for the jet quantities such as radius, speed, stretching rate, strain rate, tensile force and trajectory. We determine these quantities for different values of the parameters such as those representing the effects due to rotation, surface tension, viscosity, jet drag and viscoelasticity. We find, in particular, that the fibre jet radius decreases and the tensile force increases with the jet arc length as well as with increasing the effects of rotation and viscoelasticity. Both viscosity and surface tension indicate stabilizing effect on the viscoelastic jet. In addition, strain rate, stretching rate and the jet speed increase with the arc length, viscoelasticity and rotation rate.