Simulations of fibre orientation in dilute suspensions with front moving in the filling process of a rectangular channel using level-set method

The simulation of fibre orientation in dilute suspension with front moving is carried out using the projection and level-set methods. The motion of fibres is described using the Jeffery equation, and the contribution of fibres to the flow is accounted for by the configuration-field method. The dilute suspension of short fibres in Newtonian fluids is considered. The governing Navier-Stokes equation for the fluid flow is solved using the projection method with finite difference scheme, while the fibre-related equations are directly solved with the Runge-Kutta method. In the present study for fibres in dilute suspension flow for injection molding, the effects of various flow and material parameters on the fibre orientation, the velocity distributions and the shapes of the leading flow front are found and discussed. Our findings indicate that the presence of fibre motion has little influence on the front shape in the ranges of fibre parameters studied at the fixed Reynolds number. Influence of changing fibre parameters only causes variation of front shape in the region near the wall, and the front shape in the central core area does not vary much with the fibre parameters. On the other hand, the fibre motion has strong influence on the distributions of the streamwise and transverse velocities in the fountain flow. Fibre motion produces strong normal stress near the wall which leads to the reduction of transversal velocity as compared to the Newtonian flow without fibres, which in turn, leads to the increased streamwise velocity near the wall. Thus, the fibre addition to the flow weakens the strength of the fountain flow. The Reynolds number has also displayed significant influence on the distribution of the streamwise velocity behind the flow front for a given fibre concentration. It is also found that the fibre orientation is not always along the direction of the velocity vector in the process of mold filling. In the region of the fountain flow, the fibre near the centreline is more oriented across the streamwise direction compared to that in the region far behind the flow front. This leads to the fact that the fibre near the centreline in the region of fountain flow is more extended along the transverse direction. As the fibre orientation in the suspension flow and the shape of the flow front have great bearing on the quality of the product made from injection molding, this study has much implications for engineering applications. These results can also be useful in other fields dealing with fibre suspensions.