SIMULATING THE FLOW OF MULTIDOMAIN POLYMER BLENDS DURING MIXING USINGBEM

Mixing or blending two or more fluids of different viscosity is an imp ortant and complex issue in the polymer industry. Simulating these typ es of processes leads to a better understanding of the flow phenomena that take place during mixing. The boundary element method is ideal to simulate mixing flows, due to the large deformations and moving bound ary nature of internal batch mixers and extruders. This paper presents a boundary element simulation of the flow of multi-viscous polymer bl ends inside extruders and internal mixers. In addition, the governing equations, boundary integrals and their numerical implementation for c reeping flows are presented. The simulation is used to predict the mix ing quality of polymer blends in realistic mixing processes. The flow simulation results are in good agreement with analytical and experimen tal results.