Effect of aerodynamics on film blowing process

A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique using a renormalization group (RNG) k-epsilon model and Fluent software was employed to analyze numerically the effects of aerodynamics on the air ring cooling system of a film blowing process. An in-line scanning camera system developed in our lab was used to study experimentally the detailed dynamics of bubble instabilities. An operation window for the heat transfer coefficient and the maximum air velocity function was established. The simulation results showed that it is adequate mainly at low BUR (Blow-Up-Ratio) outside of the air ring. The relationship between thermal inertia and cooling air aerodynamics for different bubble geometries was also explored. Different bubble shapes, for the same BUR, produced significant differences in the airflow pattern and heat transfer coefficient. The combination of experimental measurements and numerical simulations indicated that various cooling rates result in important variations in the dynamics of bubble instabilities for different BUR bubbles. It was observed that increasing the cooling rate can destabilize the lower BUR bubbles, but stabilize the higher ones due to the production of different bubble shapes. Finally, it is shown that the bubble instabilities depend on the static pressure distribution along the bubble surface, and that minimizing the pressure gradient can stabilize the bubbles.