On the Fluid Mechanics of Partial Dewatering during Roll Forming in Paper Making

Abstract: The present work deals with some aspects of the fluidmechanics of paper-making,more specifically partial dewateringduring roll forming. The study is mainly experimental. Pressureand wire position measurements have been carried out in anexperimental facility, the KTH-Former,which models the rollforming zone of a paper machine.Measurements are carried out with pure water for threedifferent wires (fabrics): A non-permeable,a semi-permeable anda conventional wire. Although not used in paper making,thenon-permeable wire is useful when trying to understand thefundamental mechanics of roll forming.The semi-permeable wirewith finite but low permeability is used to model the effectsof the fibre web on the drainage.Tests have mainly been carried out for different wiretensions and different jet speeds. It is shown that the localcurvature of the wire is strongly correlated to the dewateringpressure.The conventiona wire shows a single pressure peak causingcomplete de- watering in the first part of the dewateringzone.The pressure distributions for the non-and semi-permeablewires are found to show two consecutive pressure peaks followedby a suction peak where the wire is taken of the roll.Thisoscillating behaviour is due to capillary waves where the wiretension plays the role of surface tension on a free surface.Thewavy behaviour of the wire is recovered from an analyticalmodel and the effect is governed by a dimensionless Webernumber. The measured wave lengths correspond well to thosegiven by the theory.When the wire tension is high,i.e.a high dewateringpressure,the flow in the impingement region collapses when thedynamic pressure of the headbox jet is about half of thedewatering pressure. It is shown experimentally that the localdrainage shows a correlation to the dewatering pressure andhence to the wire curvature.