Simulation of Coating -Visco-Elastic liquid in the Mico-Nip of Metering Size Press

TL;DR

This study simulates the flow of visco-elastic coating liquids in a micro-nip of a size press, revealing how vortices and rheological properties influence coating quality and defect formation.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation considering inertia and viscoelasticity in micro-nip coating flows, which were neglected in prior studies.

Findings

Vortices significantly affect coating behavior.

Increased inhibitors raise normal forces and defects.

Flow dynamics depend on rheological properties.

Abstract

For a set of operating conditions and coating color formulations, undesirable phenomena like color spitting and coating ribs may be triggered in the Micro-nip during the coating process. Therefore, our interest in this work focus on another parameter affect on the undesirable phenomena as the vortices in the Micro-nip. The problem deals with the flow through the Micro-nip of metering size press. The flow enters and exits at a tangential velocity of 20 m/s between two rollers with diameter 80 cm and 60 -m apart. In the upper and bottom part of the domain the angular velocity is 314 rad /s. It has one sub-domain. Previous studies focus on the Micro-nip without considering the inertia and the viscoelasticity of the material. Roll coating is a technique commonly used in the coating industry to meter a thin fluid film on a moving substrate. During the film formation, the fluid is subjected to very high shear and extensional rates over a very short period of time. The fluid domain changes as a function of the hydrodynamic pressure within the nip as a result of the deformable cover usually used on one of the rolls. The free surface also adds more complexity to the flow due to the force equilibrium in the fluid gas interface. Last of all, the rheological behavior of the coating fluid is usually non-Newtonian, so the metering flow hydrodynamics is finally very difficult to describe. It is concluded that the normal forces of micro-nip increases with increasing the inhibitors. Therefore, it affects on the smoothness and creates defects. On the other hand, it can be concluded that the creation of big vortex in the middle of micro-nip affects on the coating liquid behavior.