Numerical Simulation of Mixing Characteristics and Energy Consumption in Vane Extruders with Different Structure Parameters

Numerical simulation was performed with the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis software POLYFLOW (ANSYS, Inc., USA) to investigate the melt transportation energy consumption and mixing characteristics of vane extruders. By modifying related parameters in the numerical simulation models, the effects of vane arrangement and eccentricity between rotor and stator were studied. The results showed that for different vane arrangements, the vane unit with four vanes distributed uniformly had the lowest energy consumption per unit melt transported in one cycle and the best mixing characteristics. With the increase of eccentricity, the average rotational power transmitted by the vanes to the melt increased, and the rate of increase increased. The same tendency occurred for the maximum shear rate and stretching rate experienced by the particles in the vane extruder. This suggested that the mixing performance of the vane unit increased significantly with the increase of eccentricity.