Hydrodynamics of plane liquid jets aimed at applications in paper manufacturing

Sammanfattning: Process industries are in general depending, in one way or the other, on fluid mechanics.Specifically, paper manufacturing, which probably is the dominant processindustry in Sweden, is depending on the flow of cellulose fibres suspended in water.As a part of the process the suspension, consisting of fibres in water, is spread out onor between two moving permeable weaves, i.e. wires. The speed of this is usually 10–30 m/s and the suspension is spread out by a plane jet issuing from a headbox nozzle.It has been show that the conditions in the headbox and jet have a large influence onthe quality of the final paper sheet. Primarily, streaks in the paper sheet are believedto be the result of streamwise streaks in the headbox jet.The thesis is aimed at the flow phenomena which occur in the headbox jet. Theinvestigations have been made with numerical calculations, stability theory and modelexperiments using water, as well as experiments with a real paper machine headboxand fibre suspension. In the thesis an introduction to the hydrodynamics of planeliquid jets is presented together with a description of the paper forming process andthe fluid mechanics of headbox flow.The basic flow and stability of a two-dimensional plane liquid jet has been investigatedby numerical calculations, stability theory and experiments. The calculationsof the laminar basic flow is successfully compared to pitot-tube measurements of thestreamwise velocity profile. By visualisations of the flow it is found that wave disturbanceson the jet has a severe effect on the flow. These waves can be predicted bylinear stability theory, which shows the presence of five convectively unstable modes.These can be divided into three types and by comparison with the experiments thetype of the visible waves is determined. These waves seem to initiate a break-up ofthe jet, which leads to strong streamwise streaks inside the jet.By flow visualisation of headbox flow of an experimental paper machine, togetherwith analysis of the resulting paper structure using the wavelet method the correspondencebetween flow disturbances and paper quality was investigated. It was shownthat the wave instability, which is present on the low Reynolds number water jet, alsocan be found in the real the headbox jet. It is shown that these waves play an importantrole in the dynamics of the headbox jet and also have an influence on the final papersheet.