Viscoelastic simulation of extrusion film casting for linear IPP including stress induced crystallization

Abstract

In this work, 1.5D film casting membrane model proposed by Silagy et al. (Polym Eng Sci 36:2614-2625, 1996) was generalized considering single-mode modified Leonov model as the viscoelastic constitutive equation and energy equation coupled with crystallization kinetics taking temperature as well as stress induced crystallization into account. The model has been successfully validated for the linear isotactic polypropylene by using experimental data collected under extremely high cooling rate processing conditions (86°C/s), which were taken from the open literature. It has been found that utilization of flow induced crystallization significantly improves model predictions, especially for the film temperature and crystallinity. The model was consequently used to understand the role of heat transfer coefficient on the neck-in phenomenon as well as on the film velocity, temperature and crystallinity profiles. © 2019 Society of Plastics Engineers. All rights reserved.