Applied Mathematical Modelling 29 (2005) 253261

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Mixed EulerLagrange approach to modeling ber motion in high speed air ow

Y.C. Zeng *, J.P. Yang, C.W. Yu
College of Textiles, Dong Hua University, 1882 Yan-an West Road, Shanghai 200051, PR China Received 1 July 2003; received in revised form 1 August 2004; accepted 6 September 2004

Abstract A bead-elastic rod model for ber motion simulation is proposed. This model includes the eects of elastic modulus and exural rigidity of the ber, thus, it can describe the elasticity and exibility of the ber. Mixed EulerLagrange approach is adopted to derive the governing equations for modeling the ber motion in air ow. The two-way coupling is introduced so that it will give a more clear understanding on the interaction between the ber and air. The proposed model is applied in a textile process to simulate a ber motion in the nozzle of an air-jet spinning machine. 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Fiber motion; Air ow; Mathematical model; Two-way coupling; EulerLagrange predictions

1. Introduction Fiber motion in air ow has been the subject of regular investigation in many dierent elds of modern technology. In the manufacture of ber composites, air is used for orientating the bers in the resin to obtain the composites with specic properties, since the macroscopic properties of such composites greatly depend on the orientation of the bers in the medium. In the textile

Corresponding author. E-mail address: yongchun@dhu.edu.cn (Y.C. Zeng).

0307-904X/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apm.2004.09.007

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industry, high-speed air technology has recently gained greater attention in textile processing. In the processing of bers into yarn, there are four essential steps: separating, drafting, condensing and twisting. High-speed air can be used as a substitution of mechanical components to achieve all of these steps. This not only brings advantages with respect to speed of manufacture and introduces economic and technical benets, but also provides us with many novel methods of processing. The processes are all associated with the interaction of bers and air, especially the actions of air to orient, transfer, separate, condense and twist bers. Therefore, the dynamic behavior of bers in air is of interest to predict the product properties, and to study how optimum use can be made of the air. Over the years, researchers have been working on modeling the dynamic behavior of bers in ows. Fibers dier from general particulates in the following factors: (a) the aspect ratio of the ber is large; (b) the ber is elastic and exible. Therefore, any segment of the ber can stretch, bend and twist related to other segments of the ber. Earlier methods to describe a single ber of particle model [1] and rigid cylinder model [2] are so over-simplied that they do not have enough degrees of freedom to mimic the behavior of the ber. In the past decade, the sedimenting behavior of bers has been being investigated extensively. In this area, bers are considered as nonspherical rigid particles. Lin and Zhang [3] studied the motion and the orientation distribution of bers in a wedge-shaped ow. The spatial and orientational distributions of bers in an evolving mixing layer have been investigated numerically and experimentally by Lin et al. [4]. Recently, Lin et al. [5] numerically simulated the spatial and orientational distributions of bers in laminar and turbulent pipe ows, and the eects of some parameters including ber aspect ratio were investigated. It is obvious that rigid ber model can not describe the deformation of a ber, which plays an important role in textile technology. For example, because of the deformation of bers, bers can be twisted in high speed air ow. Indeed this forms the basis of many new type spinning processes. Particleuid interactions have been considered extensively in polymer dynamics where individual macromolecules have been modeled as series of spheres connected by springs or rigid rods [6]. Considering that a exible ber is analogous to a macromolecule, Yamamoto and Matsuoka [7] proposed a method for simulating the motion of rigid and exible bers in a ow eld. In their approach, the ber was modeled as spheres that were lined up and bonded to each neighbor. The approach can be used to simulate the dynamic behavior of the ber includes ber stretch, bend and twist. Unfortunately, this spherical assumption would make the approach very computationally expensive because of the large aspect ratio of the ber. Smith and Roberts [8] established a model to compute the ber motion in converging transport ducts. In their model, a ber consisted of a series of contiguous ber elements, and the governing equations were adapted from the equations of motion for an elastica in Manseld and Simmonds [9]. Focusing on the exibility of the ber, Kong and Platfoot [10] regarded the ber as a discrete distribution of masses held together by weightless chains. Nevertheless, this model would not give a clear picture of elastic deformation of the ber. In our previous work [11], a bead-elastic rod model was proposed for simulating the ber motion in high-speed air ow. The ber chain, which was made up of beads connected by massless rods, can stretch by changing the distance between adjacent beads, and bend by changing the bending deection in successive rods. The model was novel in that it included the eects of ber elastic modulus and exural rigidity, thus, it would describe the elasticity and exibility of the

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ber. Meanwhile, the computational problem of time-consuming was solved by connecting the spheres with elastic rods in stead of spheres. In the works mentioned above, the interaction of the ber and air is assumed to be a one-way problem that the inuence of the ber on air is neglected. However, when the ber mass loading ratio is increased, air ow modications may be induced. We are then faced with a two-way coupling problem. In present paper, we develop an improved bead-elastic rod model for dynamic simulation of the ber, apply a mixed EulerLagrange approach to modeling the ber motion in air ow, and introduce the two-way coupling in the simulation. The Lagrange treatment of the particulate phase combined with the Euler approach for the uid was rst proposed by Migdal and Agosta [12]. Since then, the approach was used for the computation of gas-particle ows by several researchers [13,14], and the successes have been obtained.

2. Physical model and governing equations The ber is assumed to be a chain that consists of n beads connected by n 1 massless rods as shown in Fig. 1. The chain can be stretched by changing the distance between adjacent beads, and be bent by changing the angle between successive rods. Thus, the chain is elastic and exible. Now we consider a pair of adjacent beads i 1 and i, which form a ber section (i 1, i). The stretching deformation and bending deformation of the ber section are illustrated in Figs. 2 and 3. If the distance between bead i 1 and bead i is stretched (Fig. 2), the stretching force Fei exerts on bead i: Fei k Dl; 1

Bi B1
x

B i+1

Bn

B i-1

Fig. 1. Schematic of ber model.

l i-1 i l i

Fig. 2. Stretching of a ber section.

i
l

i-1

Fig. 3. Bending of a ber section.

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where Dl is the extension of the ber section, k is a constant related to the elastic modulus E of the ber and described as k pd 2 f E 4l 2

in which df is the ber diameter, and l is the length of the ber section. To derive this relation, the ber section is regarded as a cylindrical rod, and the diameter of the rod is equal to the ber diameter. Fei is in the direction of the ber section. As shown in Fig. 3, (i 1, i) is the equilibrium position of the ber section. When bead i moves from i to i 0 , the ber section is bent. Assuming the deformation is small, the bending torque Mi exerted on bead i to back the equilibrium position is: Mi b hi ; 3

where hi is the angle in bead i due to the bending of the ber section, b is a constant related to the exural rigidity B of the ber and is described as b 2B l 4

Mi is around the direction of the ber section. When immersed in air stream, the ber is subjected to air drag. The total drag on a body is due to two components: friction drag and pressure drag (also called form drag). The total drag is the composition of these two drags. In our model, the mass of bead i is contributed by its adjacent ber sections (i 1, i) and (i, i + 1), thus, mi is described as q mi f li1;i li;i1 ; 5 2 where qf is the ber linear density, li1,i is the length of the ber section (i 1, i), and li,i+1 is the sectional length of (i, i + 1). For the end beads: bead 1 and bead n, the virtual beads 0 and n + 1 are constructed according to mirror reection. Therefore, l0,1 is equal to l1,2 the same applies to ln1,n and ln,n+1. As is the case for the mass of bead i, the drag for bead i is contributed by section (i 1, i) and (i, i + 1). The drag on bead i may be calculated by 1 Fdi Fidi1;i Fidi;i1 ; 2 6

where Fdi is the drag on bead i, Fidi1;i is the drag on bead i contributed by the ber section (i 1, i), and Fidi;i1 is the drag on bead i contributed by (i, i + 1). For the ber section (i 1, i), the drag can be written as Fidi1;i Fifi1;i Fipi1;i ; 7

where Fifi1;i is the skin friction drag on section (i 1, i) for bead i, and Fipi1;i is the pressure drag on section (i 1, i) for bead i.

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To calculate the drag on the ber section, the local relative velocity between the air and the ber is resolved into two components: axial and normal to the direction of the ber section. Thus, the friction drag and the pressure drag can be expressed as 1 Fifi1;i C f qAti1;i v2 rti 2 and 1 9 Fipi1;i C p qAni1;i v2 ; rni 2 where q is the air density. Ati1,i refers to the surface area of the ber section and described as Ati1;i pd f li1;i and Ani1,i is taken to be the maximum cross-sectional area of the ber section, that is: Ani1;i d f li1;i 11 vrti and vrni are the relative velocities in axial and normal to the direction of the ber section, respectively, at bead i. The relative velocity at bead i, vri, is calculated as vri vai vfi ; 12 where vai and vfi are the air and ber velocities at bead i. Cf and Cp are the friction drag coecient and the pressure drag coecient. Mott [15] described drag coecient in detail. The friction drag coecient is recommended to be a function of the Reynolds number Rel. Cp is given from a plot of the pressure drag coecient versus the Reynolds number Red for a cylinder placed with its axis perpendicular to the direction of motion. Rel and Red are dened as Rel and Red qvrni d f l 14 qvrti li1;i l 13 10 8

in which l is the air dynamic viscosity. Therefore, the Lagrange equations for the motion of the beads that constitute the ber are: mi d2 ri Fei Fdi dt2 15

1 2 d2 hi Mi ; mi l 3 dt2 where ri is the position of bead i. The Euler equations for air ow are: oq r qva 0; ot

16

17

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X o Fdi ; qva r qva va rp r s qf ot i

18

where p is pressure, s is shear stress tensor and f is a body force per unit mass. Summation term P means to consider all beads which constitute the ber. The additional source term i Fdi in Eq. (18) represents the inuence of the ber on air.

3. Solution procedure There are two approaches to describe the uid motion, namely the Euler and the Lagrange approaches. The Euler approach describes the distributions of the variables in ow eld at any time, while the Lagrange approach traces each particle from a certain time and describes its trajectory. In this work, we are interested in the trajectory and deformation of the ber in air ow eld, thus, a mixed EulerLagrange approach is adopted. This approach describes the air ow with the Euler approach, giving the distributions of the variables including velocity, pressure and density in the ow eld. As to the ber, the Lagrange approach is used, describing the trajectory of the ber in air ow. As a preliminary study, some assumptions are made: The inuence of uid turbulence is neglected; The air ow is regarded as an isentropic ow, so the energy equation is ignored; Boundary layers are not be taken into account; The computations are two-dimensional. In two-way EulerLagrange coupling, the drag force between the two phases is added with opposite signs to the momentum equations of both phases. This term represents the momentum transfer between the two phases. The procedure for the solution to the mixed EulerLagrange approach is: 1. Calculate the air ow without the ber disturbance by the Euler equations (17) and (18). Now, P in Eq. (18), the term i Fdi is zero. 2. Calculate the ber motion by the Lagrange equations (15) and (16), the momentum transfer P term i Fdi is obtained for the next step. 3. With the obtained momentum transfer term, calculate the disturbed air ow by the Euler equations (17) and (18). 4. Iterations involving the two previous steps. For the numerical solution of air/ber ow eld, the PSI cell (particle-source in cell) approach is used. The numerical solution procedure for the continuous phase is based on a FV (nite volume) discretization approach, and SIMPLEST is used for solver strategy. For this an orthogonal grid is applied, where the two velocities and the pressure are stored in staggered positions. We start with distributions for the velocity and pressure elds, and calculate the uid velocities from the momentum equation. Thereafter, the solution of a pressure correction equation, which has been derived from the continuity equation, yields corrected values for the velocity and the pressure elds so that the continuity equation is satised. With the corrected values, the momentum equation is solved again and the whole procedure is repeated until convergence is achieved. This was assumed to be the case when the normalized residuals at each point, summed over the whole calculation domain, are each smaller than 0.005.

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The calculations for the particle velocities, trajectories and the source terms are incorporated into the iteration loop after solving the equations for the uid. The ber element length is adjusted to compound with the CFD solver mesh size. Large scatterings of the particle source terms during the iterative calculation are damped by under-relaxation. The solutions are assumed to have converged when the normalized sums of all residuals for the equations are less than 0.005.

4. Application The proposed approach is applied to simulate a ber motion in the nozzle of an air-jet spinning machine in textile processing. Fig. 4 shows the two dimensional model of the nozzle. Compressed air from the air reservoir is forced into the twisting chamber through the jet orices. The ber is released at the jet inlet and is delivered to the jet outlet within the nozzle. The calculation domain is the twisting chamber of the nozzle, from the inlet to the outlet, including the jet orices. The parameters for the nozzle structure used in this simulation are: the twisting chamber D is 2 mm, the jet length L is 25 mm, the diameter of the jet orice d is 0.45 mm, the jet orice angle a is 45, the distance from the jet orice to the outlet l is 14 mm. The mesh size is 120 20. There are tow boundary conditions. The inlet boundary: At the jet orices, the incident velocities from the jet orices are specied according to the nozzle pressure from the air reservoir. In this case, the nozzle pressure used is 2 105 Pa. At the jet inlet, the pressure is identical to the external pressure relative to 1 105 Pa. The outlet boundary: At the jet outlet, the pressure is supposed to be the external pressure. The material parameters for the ber used in the simulation are length of 3.6 mm, diameter of 0.02 mm, linear density of 0.2 106 kg/m, elastic modulus of 525 107 Pa, and exural rigidity of 4.2 1012 N m2. In this simulation, a ber of seven beads is modeled, so the ber element length is 0.6 mm. A multi-time stepping is involved for the calculation, and the minimum time step is 0.5 104 s. The bers initial position is generated by assuming the ber chain parallel to the nozzle axis. The ber is released at the jet inlet just above the nozzle axis (position a shown in Fig. 4), and the initial velocity of the ber is 0.5 m/s.

Air reservoir

Jet orifice Twisting chamber

a Jet inlet

d l Jet outlet

Fig. 4. Basic prole of the nozzle.

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Fig. 5. Contour of the streamline.

Fig. 6. Simulation of a ber motion in the nozzle.

Fig. 7. Images of a ber motion in the nozzle.

The time evolution of the ber motion is determined by the following procedure. First, initial conditions, including an initial conguration of the ber chain, an initial position of the ber, and an initial velocity of the ber when it comes into the nozzle, are set at t = 0. Second, for a given conformation of each bead, Fei and Mi are calculated by Eqs. (1) and (3). Third, from the velocities of the bead and the air at that time, Fdi is calculated by Eq. (6) and the correlative equations (7)(14). Fourth, new coordinates of ri and hi are calculated at time t + Dt, and the velocity of the bead vfi is obtained for the next step using Eqs. (15) and (16). Fifth, by repeating the procedure from the second to the fourth steps, we can follow the motion of all beads and obtain the conguration of the ber in evolutionary time. Fig. 5 shows the contour of the streamline in the nozzle. According to the procedure, the ber motion in the nozzle is obtained and shown in Fig. 6. In this simulation, berber interactions are not considered. Once the ber collides with the walls, the calculation ends. We adopted high-speed photography to capture images of a ber passing through the nozzle of an air-jet spinning machine. A MotionProTM high-speed CMOS PCI camera was used with a Zoom-Nikkor lens of 2485 mm f/2.8. The frame rate was 10 000 fps, and the exposure time was 105 s. The release position and conguration of the ber were set to correspond to the initial conditions for the simulation. Images of the motion of a ber in the nozzle are shown in Fig. 7. Results of experiments and simulations show considerable accord.

5. Conclusions We have proposed a method for modeling the dynamic behavior of the ber in air ow. The ber model describes the character of large aspect ratio, elasticity and exibility of the ber. Therefore, it can be used to simulate the ber behavior. The elasticity and exibility of the ber are dened by two parameters k and b that related to ber elastic modulus and ber exural rigidity, respectively. Drag force is introduced to represent the interaction between the ber and air.

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Mathematical model is developed using mixed EulerLagrange approach, which treats the air ow by the Euler approach and predicts the ber motion by the Lagrange approach. We use a PSI procedure for the numerical solution. The proposed approach is applied to simulate a ber motion in the nozzle of an air-jet spinning machine in textile processing. As the rst step for this study, it is solved in two-dimension, and our focus is on the simulation of extension and bending of the ber, using EulerLagrange method. However, three-dimensional model must be developed for the simulation of twisting of the ber. The establishment of the model is not dicult, but it is very computationally expensive. Further study will focus on this subject.

Acknowledgments This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 10402009).

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