Coupling Stochastic Boundary Perturbations with Fiber Drawing Heat Transfer

A. Emery[1]
[1]University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Published in 2013

The production of polymer fibers is done by drawing raw material (preform) in a vertical cylindrical furnace whose heated walls radiantly heat the preform. The wall temperatures are very high and the dominant heat transfer to the fiber is by radiation with little effect from the convective flow of gas in the furnace. In contrast, for polymer fibers the convection contribution is large, and oscillations or stochastic variations in the gas flow can cause random diameter variations. These variations coupled with stochastic fluid variations affect the convective heat transfer and the fiber temperature. We have simulated the heating of an axisymmetric fiber with diameters varying with the axial length, z. COMSOL Multiphysics® is used to separately solve the conduction equation with user-defined boundary conditions.

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