Computational analysis of fluid-structure interaction in a PVC extrusion die

摘要

Though numerous numerical studies of the extrusion die balancing have been reported in the various fields' literatures, die designing for the PVC window profiles is still a complex task in the manufacturing technology. Once the die has been successfully designed, its behavior during the production life could exhibit weaknesses leading to a deterioration of the product quality. Particularly "stabilizer plates", also called torpedoes, the solid metal entities which are used for maintaining some parts of the die in their appropriate places, are stressed by quite a high pressure of the PVC material flowing around them. In some cases, this will induce large stress inside the stabilizer plates and causes the partial deformation, displacement or the rupture of these important elements. In this study, numerical analysis considering the fluid structure interaction (FSI) was performed in order to investigate effects of the flow rate and material properties on the stresses evolution inside the stabilizer plates. The finite element code POLYFLOW~R, developed by the Fluent Group, has been used to perform this analysis.