3/30/2023

Polymer Flow Instability

Melt Fracture
•It has been widely recognized that polymer
extrudates of wide variety of shape including
tubes, rods and other profiles can develop
distortions at some critical shear flow rates.

• The general phenomenon of distortions is

called “Melt Fracture”.

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Melt Fracture
Melt Fracture

Other than the primary melt fracture reference to the

extrusion process, melt fracture of secondary kind (inlet
melt fracture) may be produced.
This secondary manufacture does not resulting gloss
distortion but cause more or less critical surface defects
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known as shark spindle or orange peel. 4

Melt Fracture

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 3/30/2023

Analysis of Die Swell

Analysis of Die Swell
• The phenomenon of die swell is related to the elastic recovery
of the viscoelastic polymer melt. In practice, the die swell
effect can be categorised as follows:
• If the die is very short (ideally of zero length), then no shear strains
will be there and only the tensile strain in the melt will be
•In non-uniform die sections (i.e. tapered dies) swelling is due contributing to the die swell.
to both shear and tensile type elastic stresses.
•If the length of the die is relatively higher than transverse
dimension and the cross section is uniform, the tensile strains
that usually exist at the die entrance would be recovered and
only the shear component will be contributing to the die swell.

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Example
Analysis of Die Swell

• The die swell is usually represented by the swelling ratio given by the
following equation.

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Answer

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