Experimental and numerical study on isolated and non-isolated jet behavior through centrifuge spinning system

This work presents a comparison between an isolated and a non-isolated curved liquid jet emerging from a rotating nozzle through centrifuge spinning system. In the centrifugal spinning process, a polymer solution has been pushed by the centrifugal force through small nozzle of a rapidly rotating cylindrical drum. Thereby thin fibers are formed and collected on a collector in the form of a web. Centrifuge spinning suffered from a strong air resistance which leads to a more deflected jet as well as its rapidly solvent evaporation resulting in thicker nanofibers. In this work, centrifuge spinning has been equipped by a rotating collector, whereas the fabrication process was skillfully sealed from ambient airflow. A comparison was drawn between the trajectory of Newtonian liquid jets fabricated by centrifuge spinning and air-sealed centrifuge spinning. The captured images of the liquid jet trajectory using a high speed camera showed that non-isolated liquid jets were more curved than isolated liquid jets due to air resistance. A pre-presented non-linear analysis of the Navier-Stokes equations was carried out and the numerical solutions were compared with the experiments.There was fairly good agreement between the isolated jet trajectory and the model-predicted one, but there were differences between the non-isolated jet trajectory and the simulation results. The non-isolated jet curved more compared to the others due to air drag. Also, the diameter of polymeric nanofibers was predicted and compared with experiments. Some qualitative agreement was found.