PARAMETRIC OPTIMIZATION OF EXTRUDED POLYPROPYLENE ROD AND ITS INVESTIGATION USING FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

Parminder Singh, Aprinder Singh Sandhu, Saurabh Malpotra, Amrinder Singh Pannu

Abstract: Single screw extrusion is one of the key operations in plastic manufacturing industry. There are many process parameters of single screw extruder namely, die temperature, barrel temperature, screw speed and composition. These parameters and their interaction have been investigated by different researcher for better quality outcomes. The present work studies the influence of three main process parameter namely, dies temperature, barrel temperature and screw speed on the mechanical properties of polypropylene (M-12RR grade) rods. The critical process parameters were optimized using Taguchi L9 orthogonal array and analysis of variance for achieving high tensile strength and % elongation. Further, the optimized results have been investigated using ANSYS FLUENT 15.0 software. The results of the study reveal that screw speed is the most contributing factor to control tensile strength and %elongation, the least contributing factor is barrel temperature. The effect of process parameters on the fluid flowing inside the die of single screw extruder were investigated using CFD analysis.

Keywords: Single screw extrusion, Polypropylene (M-12RR), Taguchi L9 orthogonal array, Computational fluid dynamics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2017.0607014