An iterative approach to the thermal Newtonian blown film model. (English) Zbl 1334.80013

Bennett, James C.; Shepherd, John J.; Blyth, William F.

ANZIAM J. 48C(2006-2010), Proc. 2006, C837-C851 (2008).

Summary: Film blowing, by which thin polymer film is manufactured, is an industrial process with products used in a wide range of applications. Modelling of this process requires solving the highly nonlinear differential equations necessary to describe the complex chemical and physical interactions involved. Earlier work applied a mixture of analytic and numerical techniques to this modelling when the polymer involved was a Newtonian fluid operating under isothermal conditions. Subsequent calculations extended this analysis to the non-isothermal Newtonian film. However, the numerical procedures used were found to be computationally expensive. We apply a more robust finite element approach to these computations, that avoids the difficulties of the earlier methods, and is an improvement on these previous efforts.

MSC:

80M25

Other numerical methods (thermodynamics) (MSC2010)