Mathematical Modelling of Pneumatic Melt Spinning of Isotactic Polypropylene. Part I. Modelling of the Air Jet Dynamics

In this series of publications, the process of nonwoven melt blowing of ultra-fine fibers is presented. The process starts in the dual slot die where two converging air jets draw the molten polymer stream. In the present paper (Part 1), the air flow field is investigated with the aid of the k - epsilon turbulence model, which is solved numerically. From the results of computations, we have distributions of the air flow parameters along the z - axis, which is also the axis of pneumatic melt spinning. These parameters are the air velocity, temperature and pressure, which will be used in Part H and III to compute the fiber melt blowing dynamics.