This work deals with the curling behavior of slender viscous jets in rotational spinning processes. In terms of slender-body theory, an instationary incompressible viscous Cosserat rod model is formulated which differs from the approach of Ribe et al.,18 in the incompressibility approximation and reduces to the string model of Marheineke and Wegener13 for a vanishing slenderness parameter. Focusing exclusively on viscous and rotational effects on the jet in the exit plane near the spinning nozzle, the stationary two-dimensional scenario is described by a two-point boundary value problem of a system of first-order ordinary differential equations for jet's center-line, tangent, curvature, velocity, inner shear and traction force and couple. The numerical analysis shows that the rod model covers the string model in an inertia-dominated jet regime. Beyond that it overcomes the limitations of the string model studied by Götz et al.10 and enables even the handling of the viscous-inertial jet regime. Thus, the rod model shows its applicability for the simulation of industrially relevant parameter ranges and enlarges the domain of validity with respect to the string approach.

In many spinning processes, as for example in dry spinning, solvent evaporates out of the spun jets and leads to thinning and solidification of the produced fibers. Such production processes are significantly driven by the interaction of the fibers with the surrounding airflow. Faced with industrial applications producing up to several hundred fibers simultaneously, the direct numerical simulation of the three-dimensional multiphase, multiscale problem is computationally extremely demanding and thus in general not possible. In this paper, we hence propose a dimensionally reduced, efficiently evaluable fiber model that enables the realization of fiberair interactions in a two-way coupling with airflow computations. For viscous dry spinning of an uni-axial two-phase flow, we deduce one-dimensional equations for fiber velocity and stress from cross-sectional averaging and combine them with two-dimensional advection-diffusion equations for polymer mass fraction and temperature revealing the radial effects that are observably present in experiments. For the numerical treatment of the resulting parametric boundary value problem composed of one-dimensional ordinary differential equations and two-dimensional partial differential equations we develop an iterative coupling algorithm. Thereby, the solution of the advection-diffusion equations is implicitly given in terms of Green's functions and leads for the surface values to Volterra integral equations of second kind with singular kernel, which we can solve very efficiently by the product integration method. For the ordinary differential equations a suitable collocation-continuation procedure is presented. Compared with the referential solution of a three-dimensional setting, the numerical results are very convincing. They provide a good approximation while drastically reducing the computational time. This efficiency allows the twoway coupled simulation of industrial dry spinning in airflows for which we present results for the first time in literature.

We develop a general regularized thin-fibre (string) model to predict the properties of non-Newtonian fluid fibres generated by centrifugal spinning. In this process the fibre emerges from a nozzle of a spinneret that rotates rapidly around its axis of symmetry, in the presence of centrifugal, Coriolis, inertial, viscous/shear-thinning, surface tension and gravitational forces. We analyse the effects of five important dimensionless groups, namely, the Rossby number (Rb), the Reynolds number (Re), the Weber number (We), the Froude number (Fr) and a power-law index (m), on the steady state trajectory and thinning of fibre radius. In particular, we find that the gravitational force mainly affects the fibre vertical angle at small arc lengths as well as the fibre trajectory. We show that for small Rb, which is the regime of nanofibre formation in centrifugal spinning methods, rapid thinning of the fibre radius occurs over small arc lengths, which becomes more pronounced as Re increases or m decreases. At larger arc lengths, a relatively large We results in a spiral trajectory regime, where the fibre eventually recovers a corresponding inviscid limit with a slow thinning of the fibre radius as a function of the arc length. Viscous forces do not prevent the fibre from approaching the inviscid limit, but very strong surface tension forces may do so as they could even result in a circular trajectory with an almost constant fibre radius. We divide the spiral and circular trajectories into zones of no thinning, intense thinning and slow or ceased thinning, and for each zone we provide simple expressions for the fibre radius as a function of the arc length.

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This work deals with the modeling and simulation of slender viscous jets exposed to gravity and rotation, as they occur in rotational spinning processes. In terms of slender-body theory, we show the asymptotic reduction of a viscous Cosserat rod to a string system for vanishing slenderness parameter. We propose two string models, i.e. inertial and viscous-inertial string models, that differ in the closure conditions and hence yield a boundary value problem and an interface problem, respectively. We investigate the existence regimes of the string models in the four-parametric space of Froude, Rossby, Reynolds numbers and jet length. The convergence regimes where the respective string solution is the asymptotic limit to the rod turn out to be disjoint and to cover nearly the whole parameter space. We explore the transition hyperplane and derive analytically low and high Reynolds number limits. Numerical studies of the stationary jet behavior for different parameter ranges complete the work.

The optimal design of rotational production processes for glass wool manufacturing poses severe computational challenges to mathematicians, natural scientists and engineers. In this paper we focus exclusively on the spinning regime where thousands of viscous thermal glass jets are formed by fast air streams. Homogeneity and slenderness of the spun fibers are the quality features of the final fabric. Their prediction requires the computation of the fluid-fiber-interactions which involves the solving of a complex three-dimensional multiphase problem with appropriate interface conditions. But this is practically impossible due to the needed high resolution and adaptive grid refinement. Therefore, we propose an asymptotic coupling concept. Treating the glass jets as viscous thermal Cosserat rods, we tackle the multiscale problem by help of momentum (drag) and heat exchange models that are derived on basis of slender-body theory and homogenization. A weak iterative coupling algorithm that is based on the combination of commercial software and self-implemented code for flow and rod solvers, respectively, makes then the simulation of the industrial process possible. For the boundary value problem of the rod we particularly suggest an adapted collocation-continuation method. Consequently, this work establishes a promising basis for future optimization strategies.

In melt-blowing processes micro-and nanofibers are produced by the extrusion of polymeric jets into a directed, turbulent high-speed airflow. Up to now the physical mechanism for the drastic jet thinning is not fully understood, since in the existing literature the numerically computed/predicted fiber thickness differs several orders of magnitude from those experimentally measured. Recent works suggest that this discrepancy might arise from the neglect of the turbulent aerodynamic fluctuations in the simulations. In this paper we confirm this suggestion numerically. Due to the complexity of the process direct numerical simulations of the multiscalemultiphase problem are not possible. Hence, we develop a numerical framework for a growing fiber in turbulent air that makes the simulation of industrial setups feasible. For this purpose we employ an asymptotic viscoelastic model for the fiber. The turbulent effects are taken into account by a stochastic aerodynamic force model where the underlying velocity fluctuations are reconstructed from a k-turbulence description of the airflow. Our numerical results show the significance of the turbulence on the jet thinning and give fiber diameters of realistic order of magnitude.

An electrified visco-capillary jet shows different dynamic behavior, such as cone forming, breakage into droplets, whipping and coiling, depending on the considered parameter regime. The whipping instability that is of fundamental importance for electrospinning has been approached by means of stability analysis in previous papers. In this work we alternatively propose a model framework in which the instability can be computed straightforwardly as the stable stationary solution of an asymptotic Cosserat rod description. For this purpose, we adopt a procedure by Ribe (Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. A, 2004) describing the jet dynamics with respect to a frame rotating with the a priori unknown whipping frequency that itself becomes part of the solution. The rod model allows for stretching, bending and torsion, taking into account inertia, viscosity, surface tension, electric field and air drag. For the resulting parametric boundary value problem of ordinary differential equations we present a continuation-collocation method. On top of an implicit Runge-Kutta scheme of fifth order, our developed continuation procedure makes the efficient and robust simulation and navigation through a high-dimensional parameter space possible. Despite the simplicity of the employed electric force model the numerical results are convincing, the whipping effect is qualitatively well characterized.