Development of a simulation tool to analyze the orientation of LCPs during extrusion process

In this thesis, different aspects of the rheology and directionality of the liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) are investigated. The rheology of LCPs are modeled with different rheological models in different die geometries. The final goal in modeling the rheology and directionality of LCPs is to have a better understanding of their rheology during extrusion processing methods inside extrusion dies and eventually produce more isotropic films of LCPs. An attempt to design a die geometry that produces more isotropic films was made and it was shown that it is possible to use the inertia of the polymer to generate a more isotropic velocity profile at the lip of the die. This isotropic velocity profile can lead to alignment of directors along the streamlines and produce an isotropic film of LCP. It is shown that the rheological properties of the LCP should be altered to have a very low viscosity for this type of die to work.;To be able to investigate the effect of processing on directionality of LCPs, it is essential to develop a method to simulate the directionality based on processing conditions. As a result, a user defined function (UDF) code was added to ANSYSRTM ~FLUENTRTM~ to simulate the directionality of LCPs. The rheology of the LCP is modeled using power-law fluid model and the consistency index (K) and power-law index (n) were estimated based on the experimental measurements done with capillary rheometry. Three main phenomena that affect the directionality namely effects of Franks elastic energy, the effect of shear and the effect of movement of crystals with the bulk of polymer are investigated. The results of this simulation are close to physical phenomena seen in real LCPs. To quantify the directionality of the LCPs, the order parameter of the domain were calculated and compared for different flow and fluid conditions.;All polymers including LCPs are viscoelastic fluids in molten state. To understand the rheology of LCPs, a die-swell experiment was carried out using LCP material and Polypropylene (PP). For this experiment a capillary die with two different land-lengths was designed and built. The die-swell of the materials were measured optically according to ISO standards and the dependence of the die swell for materials on rheological properties is investigated.;To simulate the viscoelasticity of LCPs numerically, ANSYSRTM ~POLYFLOWRTM~ was used. ANSYSRTM ~POLYFLOWRTM~ has several viscoelastic models and is designed to simulate extrusion processes. The geometry of the capillary die designed for the experiments was modeled in ANSYSRTM ~POLYFLOWRTM~ and the results were compared with the experimental results obtained for LCP and PP. It is shown that the morphology of the polymer should be considered into account to have a correct simulation of die swell.