Abstract:

An air drawing model of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) polymer and one of the air jet flow field in the spunbonding process are established. The air jet flow field model is solved and simulated by means of the finite difference method. Numerical simulation computation results of the distributions of air velocity match quite well with the experimental data. The air drawing model of the polymer is solved with the help of distributions of air velocity measured by Particle Image Velocimetry. The model’s predictions of filament fiber diameters, crystallinities and birefringences coincide well with the experimental data. Therefore it can be concluded that a higher initial air temperature can yield finer filament fiber diameter, and a higher initial air velocity can produce a finer fiber diameter as well. The experimental results show that the agreement between the results and experimental data is much better, which verifies the reliability of these models. Also they reveal great prospects for this work in the field of the computer assisted design (CAD) of the spunbonding process.