To quantify mixing quality in a single screw extruder simulation

Part of the project: TFF-Optimization of Mixing Elements.
Polymer mixing with a single screw extruder is a common process in industry. Mixing quality depends on (amongst others) the screw geometry. The main objective of this study was to quantify distributive mixing behavior of a single screw extruder with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Tracer particles and Shannon entropy calculations were used to determine the distributive mixing quality as function of direction, position in the extruder and scale of observation.