Analysis of Leakage Flow in Pressure-Generating Melt-Conveying Zones

In many extrusion analyses, the pumping capability of the extruder screw is overestimated. This is usually due to the effect of the flight clearance being omitted in the mathematical model. The clearance between flight land and barrel surface enables the polymer melt to leak across the flights, thereby reducing the effectiveness with which the screw can pump the polymer melt forward. A few studies have proposed modifications to the widely known pumping model to account for the effect of leakage flow. While most of these consider Newtonian fluids, less attention has been directed towards shear-thinning polymer melts. We propose approximate equations to predict the flow of power-law fluids through the flight clearance of pressure-generating melt-conveying zones. Rather than correct the net material throughput of the single-screw extruder, we locally describe the two-dimensional flow between the flight tip and the barrel surface. Our novel models, which predict the flow rate and viscous dissipation, increase the understanding of the flow of shear-thinning polymer melts across the flights. Implemented in our screw calculation routine (introduced in [1-4]), they also serve as the basic equations for the network elements positioned over the screw flights.