Experimental study and prediction of the diameter of melt-electrospinning polypropylene fiber

Firstly, the effects of the spinning temperature, spinning voltage, tip-to-collector distance and ambient temperature on the diameter of melt-electrospinning polypropylene (PP) fibers were studied. The results showed that with the increase of the spinning temperature, spinning voltage and tip-to-collector distance, the fiber diameters first decreased and then increased. However, when the ambient temperature increased, the fiber diameters increased gradually. Secondly, based on the previous results, the response surface methodology (RSM) was used to investigate the combined effects of processing parameters on fiber diameters and establish a second-order polynomial equation to predict the fiber diameter. The results showed that the effect order of four factors on fiber diameter was as follows: spinning temperature > tip-to-collector distance > ambient temperature > spinning voltage. Moreover, the fiber diameter predicted by response surface analysis fitted well with the experimental result. Finally, three layer melt-electrospinning PP webs with different fiber diameters were online compounded with conventional non