Melting occurs primarily at the barrel wall due to shear between the solids in the rotating screw and the stationary barrel wall.
As the accompanying illustration shows, in a conventional screw the melt (or “melt pool”) width increases as it moves down the barrel; eventually melt fills most of the channel as melting progresses. Barrier-type screws are designed to allow the melted polymer to flow over the increased clearance of the barrier flight and accumulate in a separate channel, thereby keeping the area where unmelted polymer is in contact with the barrel wall quite constant. As a result, the melting rate is also constant throughout the barrier-section length, unlike a conventional screw design, which generally has decreasing melting rate due to the enlarging melt pool as material moves down the screw.
Equations for many aspects of extrusion screws were developed and later published by Imrich Klein and Zehev Tadmor, two of the principal researchers at Western Electric, in their book Engineering Principles of Plasticating Extrusion. I used programs developed by them for a number of years before developing my own techniques. As an example of how their formulas can help explain many things, the melting-rate equation shows the importance of the solid-bed width (X) against the barrel wall as well as the effect of other variables necessary for the melting calculation.
· Chris Roosendaal; Polymer Extrusion; (2014); 5th Edition; Hanser Publishers, Munich; ISBN 978-1-56990-516-6 E-Book ISBN 978-1-56990-539-5
· Pierre G. Lafleur, Bruno Vergnes; (2014). Polymer Extrusion (1st ed.). Wiley. https://www.perlego.com/book/1001487
Articles:
· Lewandowski, A., & Wilczyński, K. (2022). Modeling of Twin Screw Extrusion of Polymeric Materials. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym14020274.
· Kadyirov, A., Gataullin, R., & Karaeva, J. (2019). Numerical Simulation of Polymer Solutions in a Single-Screw Extruder. https://doi.org/10.3390/app9245423.
· Roland, W., Kommenda, M., Marschik, C., & Miethlinger, J. (2019). Extended Regression Models for Predicting the Pumping Capability and Viscous Dissipation of Two-Dimensional Flows in Single-Screw Extrusion. https://doi.org /10. 3390/ polym11020334.
· Roland, W., Marschik, C., Kommenda, M., Haghofer, A., Dorl, S., & Winkler, S. (2021). Predicting the Non-Linear Conveying Behavior in Single-Screw Extrusion: A Comparison of Various Data-Based Modeling Approaches used with CFD Simulations. https://doi.org/10.1515/ipp-2020-4094.
· Lin, Y., & Lee, G. (1997). System Identification for State Feedback Integral Observer Control of Polymer Plastic Extrusion. https://doi.org/10.1080/03602559708000659.
· Nasyrova, S., & Kaufman, I. (1966). Extruder flow. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00859982.