Experiments and simulation of the spreading behavior of fibre bundle in pneumatic spreader

Fibre spreading before impregnation process has great importance for production of non-woven fabrics. Thousands of filaments can be transported and spread by airflow in a pneumatic chamber. To better understand the lateral-spreading mechanism of the system, the generation and evolution of lateral dragging forces applied on fibre bundle are demonstrated through experiments and simulations. with the CFD model of the spreader and discrete element method (DEM), the spreading behavior of the filaments in the bundle are simulated. By parametrically analyzing the characteristics of fractal airflows, the influence of design parameters on the fractal airflow is analyzed and optimized. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data. The width of the bundle has been widened almost 10 times, which has improved by 100 % compared with traditional mechanical spread method.