Fiber Orientation Control Related to Papermaking

Abstract

The orientation of fibers suspended in a shear flow flowing over a solid wall has been studied experimentally. The possibility to control this orientation with physical surface modifications, ridges, has also been studied. The fiber suspension was driven by gravity down a slightly inclined glass plate and a charge-coupled device camera was used to capture images of the fibers in the flow. Image analysis based on the concept of steerable filters extracted the position and orientation of the fibers in the plane of the image. From these data, the velocity of the fibers was determined. When viewing the flow from the side, the velocity of the fibers at different heights was measured and found to agree with the theoretical solution for Newtonian flow down an inclined plate. Moving the camera so that the flow was filmed from below, the orientation, and velocity of fibers in the plane parallel to the solid surface was determined. The known relationship between the velocity and the wall normal position of the fibers made it possible to determine the height above the plate for each identified fiber. Far away from the wall, the fibers were aligned with the flow direction in both cases. In a region close to the smooth plate surface the fibers oriented themselves perpendicular to the flow direction. This change in orientation did not occur when the surface structure was modified with ridges.