Enhancement of Mixing Performance of Single Screw Extruder Processes Via Chaotic Flows (2)

The main idea of the Chaos Screw design lies in the spatially periodic barriers inserted in the channel to break closed streamlines in regular flows, which induces the chaotic mixing. The present article describes the basic mechanism of the chaotic mixing in a single screw extruder and presents experimental evidence of the chaotic mixing using the Chaos Screw. Experimental mixing patterns due to the chaotic flow clearly indicate that the Chaos Screw drastically enhances the mixing performance in a single-screw extruder. It may be mentioned that the accompanying article, Part II, presents numerical investigation which shows that the chaotic mixing was successfully predicted by numerical simulations.