Modelling the dynamics of flexible and rigid fibres

A particle-level simulation technique has been developed for modelling fibre suspension flow in a converging channel of a papermachine headbox. The fibre model is represented by a chain of elements connected together. The model was verified by the simulation of rigid fibre dynamics in a simple shear flow. The period of rotation was found to be in a very good agreement with theory and reference data. The model was then employed to simulate fibre motion in a converging channel of a papermachine headbox. Fibre suspension motion was resolved using two-step procedure. Velocity field was calculated by means of a commercial CFD code ANSYS Fluent with RSM turbulence model applied and used as an input to the in-house code allowing to simulate fibre dynamics. Results of the calculations were used to construct the fibre orientation probability distribution (FOPD) which was found to be consistent with available experimental data.