Modelisation des elements de melange en extrusion par la methode des elements frontieres (French text)

In order to obtain new plastic materials, polymer mixing is a very commonly used process. Polymer processing using single-screw extrusion makes it possible by modifying the screw of extrusion. For this reason, the Maddock mixing head is used in order to study its effect on quality of the mixing.; The mixing of polymers is characterized by two mechanisms: the dispersive mixing and the distributive mixing. In this work, the dispersive mixing is especially studied. The experimental part of this project studies the dispersion of the secondary phase in the polymer matrix. First, the dispersion characterization of various types of agglomerates in PVC is carried out. Second test has consisted in characterizing the dispersion of the CaCO3 loads in the polypropylene (PP) matrix.; Besides the experimental study, the numerical methods can be used to provide more detailed information on the mixing flows. In this study the Boundary Element Method (BEM) is used. In the case of the Newtonian simulations, BEM is characterized by easy meshing and calculation at the internal points and for these reasons is very advantageous compared to other numerical methods.; Whereas, the polymer flows exhibit non-Newtonian behaviors and consequently non-linear constitutive equation, the BEM simulations have to take that into account. The classical BEM enables to solve this type of problems. Specific techniques have to be developed in order to adapt the BEM resolution. For that, the technique of multi-domain decomposition together with the Dual Reciprocity Method (DRM) has been developed. Software called "POLY_BEM" has been developed based upon BEM. Newtonian and non-Newtonian computations have been performed in 3D and 2D respectively. The dispersion performances of mixing devices are calculated using the flow number definition.; In order to validate these results, preliminary comparisons have been carried out showing the beneficial effect of the mixing head.; The polymer flow in specific zones of the mixing head (the entry and the exit of the narrow gap between channels) exhibits elongational flows improving dispersion more than in other zones.