Numerical Simulation of Impinging Jet Drying Multiphase Flow in Gravure Printing Water-Based Ink Based on the Volume of Fluid Method

Abstract

Gravure printing is widely used in food, pharmaceutical, and other packaging industries. As a green printing material, water-based ink has problems such as non-volatile and poor drying on non-absorbent packaging substrates, which has a great impact on its application. To solve these difficulties, this study adopts the volume of fluid (VOF) method and user-defined function (UDF) to establish a multiphase flow impinging air jets drying model of water-based ink in the gravure printing process, taking a water-based ink droplet as an example. The model was used to simulate the ink drying state in the impinging air jets region and analyze the effects of impinging air jets’ temperature and velocity, as well as ink viscosity and thickness, on the ink drying efficiency. Meanwhile, the heat and mass transfer mechanism between impinging air jets and water-based ink was investigated. The results show that the higher impinging air jet temperature and velocity, the faster the drying rate of the ink; a lower viscosity and thinner thickness of ink can also enhance the drying efficiency of the ink. The multiphase impinging air jets drying model based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method provides a new research idea for the analysis of drying characteristics of water-based ink on non-absorbent substrates, and the research results provide theoretical support to promote its application.

Effect of the Curvature Radius on Single-Droplet Dynamic Characteristics within a Concave-Wall Jet

“…Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation has been widely used in the study of jet flow, and numerical simulation provides theoretical support to facilitate engineering applications. The k-ε turbulence models made more contributions to studying the largescale vortices caused the jet flow [11][12][13]. However, the changes in small-scale vortices with time cannot be studied in depth.…”

Numerical Simulation on Ink Transfer Channel of Flexography Based on Fluid–Solid-Heat Interactions

“…Scholars all over the world have paid much attention to flexographic printing and have deeply studied various aspects of flexographic printing technology [4][5][6][7]. In view of the complexity and difficulty of the printing mechanism of non-absorbent substrates in gravure printing, Wu Shuang, Dong Ling, Guan Xiaomin, and Zhu Hongjuan have made a preliminary study on the transfer and drying of gravure water-based ink [8][9][10][11]. The research results provide a way to solve the problem of gravure flexo printing on a non-absorbent substrate.…”