Abstract: Numerical simulation was performed on polymer melt in the mixing section of two-rotor continuous mixer using POLYFLOW software. The flow field characteristics experienced by the materials was statistically analyzed using particle tracking analysis (PTA) method. The average shear rate, resident time distribution (RTD), and cumulative max-stretch-rate distribution were obtained, which were used to describe the influences of structure of rotors and technological parameters on the mixing performance of the mixer. It was found that the shearing and stretching actions that materials subjected to increased with increasing rotor speed; the specific shear rate in unit resident time of the materials in the mixing section decreased with increasing feeding rate; the shearing action increased with decreasing length of rotor convergence section. The length of rotor convergence section and the angle of rotor had little influence on resident time distribution. The results of numerical simulation agreed well with the data.

Key words: two-rotor continuous mixer, rotor structure, technological parameter, numerical simulation, experimental verification