A concept for a novel polymer extruder part 2: rotational barrel segment

Abstract

This paper presents a novel concept of an extrusion machine for polymer plastics, polymer-matrix materials, and food processing applications. The design of the extruder includes a rotational barrel segment to enable kinematic activation in the process of plasticizing the material and improvement in the homogenization level. The tests included a FEM-based numerical analysis of the rotational barrel segment design. The numerical calculations comprised a fully coupled thermal-stress analysis, used to solve a non-linear geometric and physical problem. The numerical calculation results proved that the designed structural parts of the rotational barrel segment had sufficient strength and that the design of the rotational barrel segment was suitable in terms of the required temperature distribution within the structural parts. The numerical calculation tool used in the analysis was ABAQUS , commercially available software.