Learning Forum

[ameshaaaaa]

I am trying to simulate the flow of a polymer through the hot end of a filament extruder. A run down of my system would be, the polymer is fed into the system via a hopper (not included in the hot end). The polymer, in it's current state moves through the system via the movement of an auger bit and then once it reaches the band heater (the heating element) it is liquefied and then it moves out of the hexagonal steel pipe (or brass plug) and is cooled to form a long continuous strand of filament. I have included schematic diagram as well as the the 3D rendition of the hot end as reference. I have been told to use Ansys Polyflow but I every time I try to use it I get the following error message:

“The domain of the sub task F.E.M. Task 1 Subtask 1 is composed of disconnected sub-domains. Sub tasks must be defined on connected sub domains! Please consider using Non-conformal boundaries!”

 I shared the topology within SpaceClaim but I am still not getting it right. I tried using Fluent but I can't model the change of phase of the polymer as it enters the system as a solid and then is liquefied and then cooled into a solid. Thank you advance.

[ydai]

Hello Amesh Based on your description, you want to model the polymer entering the inlet as the solid state, and gets heated up to be melted into liquid and flows out of the pipe.
This is a simulation which requires the model feature of phase change on which Polyflow does not have. Polyflow is a single phase flow solver on polymer fluid with high viscosity. Therefore polyflow can not be applied to model this application.
Fluent does have solidification and melting model in general, but it can not model the flow on material which enters the domain as solid, since the velocity in the solid material is zero which does not flow and is not allowed to enter the flow inlet of a computation domain. Therefore you may want to reconsider your flow with different condition so Fluent may be able to be applied.
Thanks
Yi