USE OF DIMENSIONLESS NUMBERS IN ANALYZING MELT FLOW AND MELT COOLING PROCESSES, 2007 PLACE Conference

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Dimensionless analysis is a powerful tool in analyzing the transient heat transfer and flow processes accompanying melt flow in an injection mold or cooling in blown film,to quote a couple of examples. However, because of the nature of non-Newtonian polymer melt flow the dimensionless numbers used to describe flow and heat transfer processes of Newtonian fluids have to be modified for polymer melts. This paper describes how an easily applicable equation for the cooling of melt in a spiral flow in injection molds has been derived on the basis of modified dimensionless numbers and verified by experiments. Analyzing the air gap dynamics in extrusion coating is another application of dimensional analysis.