In situ Pressure Fluctuations of Polymer Melt Flow Instabilities: Experimental Evidence about their Origin and Dynamics

Humberto Palza; Ingo F C Naue; Manfred Wilhelm

doi:10.1002/marc.200900296

In situ Pressure Fluctuations of Polymer Melt Flow Instabilities: Experimental Evidence about their Origin and Dynamics

Macromol Rapid Commun. 2009 Nov 2;30(21):1799-804. doi: 10.1002/marc.200900296. Epub 2009 Jul 15.

Authors

Humberto Palza¹, Ingo F C Naue, Manfred Wilhelm

Affiliation

¹ Institut für Technische Chemie und Polymerchemie, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Engesserstrasse 18, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany; Departamento de Ingenieria Quimica y Biotecnologia, Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Matematicas, Universidad de Chile and Centro para la Investigacion Interdisciplinaria Avanzada en Ciencia de los Materiales (CIMAT), Beauchef 861, Casilla 277, Santiago, Chile. hpalza@ing.uchile.cl.

PMID: 21638456
DOI: 10.1002/marc.200900296

Abstract

Despite the practical importance of polymer melt instabilities, there is still a lack of experiments able to characterize in situ the origin and behavior of these phenomena. In this context, a new set-up consisting of high sensitive pressure transducers located inside a slit-die and an advanced mathematical framework to process in situ measurements of polymer melt instabilities, are developed and applied. Our results show for the first time that pressure oscillations can actually be detected inside the die under sharkskin conditions. This originates from a factor of 10(3) and 10(2) improvement in terms of time and pressure resolution. Furthermore, new evidence towards the propagation of the slip phenomena along the die in spurt instabilities are found.