Computer Simulation of Film Blowing

The present work is concerned with the numerical simulation of the blown film process and its comparison to experimental data. The bubble formation and the biaxial stretching of the film were studied using a non-isothermal, purely viscous, temperature dependent model. The model is incorporated into a software package called B-FILMCAD. Special attention has been given to the importance of the temperature in the modeling of the blown film process. It was found that temperature is by far the most important modeling parameter. The results show that the majority of the process parameters can be successfully predicted by the employed model, showing a good agreement between experimental data from various investigators and numerical predictions. This was valid for most of the studied cases despite the diversity of the experimental data. With the use of the present model many useful conclusions can be drawn about blown film production lines.