Analytical and Experimental Evaluation of Dispersive Mixing Performance of Special Rotor Segments in a Corotating Twin-Screw Extruder

An intermeshing corotating twin-screw extruder is often used for producing polymer composites. In this study, we discussed mixing performance of special rotor segments in molten zone. These rotor segments have several tip clearances for achievement of self-cleaning and effective mixing, and these are named various clearance mixing technology. We studied about dispersive mixing performance of configuration, which consists of various clearance mixing technologys (various clearance mixing technology configuration) using numerical analyses and experiments. For the analytical evaluation of mixing performance, we have adopted a particle tracking method. As evaluation indices of dispersive mixing performance, we focused on following three values (1) maximum value in a history of first principal stress of each particle, (2) time-integrated shear rate of each particle, and (3) time-integrated first principal stress of each particle. And we made the probability distributions of the indices. We adopted weighted probability as approximation of volume probability in each region. The results were compared with those of kneading disk segments configuration (kneading disk configuration). Furthermore, we validated the accuracy of the analytical evaluation by performing experiments under same conditions as those of numerical analyses. For the experimental evaluation of mixing performance, we used twin-screw extruder. Polypropylene was selected as suspending media. And CaCO₃ was selected as filler. To compare just the mixing performance of various clearance mixing technology configuration with that of kneading disk configuration, side feeding and screw configuration which had third mixing segments zone were adopted. From the experimental result, it is found that various clearance mixing technology configuration dispersed better than kneading disk configuration. And from the comparison between the experimental evaluation and the analytical evaluation, it is found that the first principal stress is more appropriate for evaluation index of dispersive mixing. Finally, it can be mentioned that various clearance mixing technology configuration has better mixing performance than kneading disk configuration, and large stress is important for dispersive mixing.