Modeling and Finite Element Simulations of Ceramic Paste Extrusion in 3D Printing

Abstract

Ceramic paste extrusion process, such as 3D printing, is commonly used for fabricating high quality products, like catalyst pellets for heterogeneous catalytic reactors, porous catalyst for cleaning gas released from an auto, ceramic block packing for immediate heat conduction adsorption process. Ceramic pastes can be characterized as non-Newtonian fluid. The extrusion of ceramic paste is complicated procedure which is controlled by viscosity of the paste, form of the extruder and die, and other operation restrictions. Meaningful part in performing the extrusion process to produce high quality extrudates of requested shape, structure and resistance are modeling and numerical analysis of extrusion process. The mathematical model is based on continuity and momentum equations which describe the motion of non-Newtonian fluid characterized by the modified Herschel-Bulkley model. Numerical simulations of ram extrusion process are provided in this work....