The progressive development of new screw concepts in single screw extrusion also makes it necessary to develop new models for the correct process description. When looking at wave-dispersion screws, the disperse melting behavior should be mentioned in particular, which has so far been less researched and modeled than the conventional melting behavior, as it occurs in standard screws. Therefore, an analytical model is presented in this paper, which considers the disperse melting under consideration of the melt and solid temperature. The basic assumption is Fourier heat conduction from the melt surrounding the particles into the particles. Furthermore, the melt temperature development by dissipation and the cooling effects were modeled analytically. Additionally, the solid bed temperature was modeled by a 2D-FDM method. By dividing the screw into several calculation sections with constant boundary conditions, it was subsequently possible to calculate the melting process over the screw length. The model developed shows comprehensible results in verification and successfully reproduces the solids content over the screw length with a mean deviation of absolute 11% in validation tests using cooling/pulling-out experiments.
Keywords: extrusion; melting; modeling and simulation; polymer processing; wave-dispersion screw.