Simulation of Taylor Cone for

Electrospinning Process
Capstone Project 2022

Karanvir Singh Grewal 18107048

Avalnoor Singh 17107098
V Arvind 17107008
Ankit Kumar 18107042
Akshat Gaur 18107113
Ankesh Kumar Singh 16107098
The Basic Structure of Electrospinning
Process
Electrospinning
Electrospinning is a process of forming the Nano bers using the Electric forces as driving forces which provide the
Momentum to the charged Polymer solution coming from the emitter.

This presentation covers the following topics in the same chronological order

• What is Electrospinning?

• How does this process work?

• Parameters for the process

• How do certain variables a ect the process?

• Emitter design.

• Mesh.

• Notes on meshing.

• Distinction of workload.

• Simulation of droplet via patching (90 degrees) then rationalization.

• Stabilizing the meniscus.

• UDF for Electric Field and associated forces.

• Contours of electric eld.

• Varying Voltage and subsequent results.

fi
ff
fi
Principle of Working

• When the polymer solution which is conductive in nature is exposed to an electric eld, It
starts deforming from the standard state caused by the Surface Tension of the Liquid to a
cone like structure at the point where electric force is more prominent compared to the
surface tension.

• As we Increase the Electric Potential Electric forces start dominating and at a critical
voltage, theoretically from the point where the electric eld is maximum, the jet of
Polymer solution get ejected and equilibrium is established as current ows and circuit
completes.

• The electric force e ect increases with increase in the voltage and at a certain threshold
voltage the Polymer liquid overpass the surface forces and get emitted from the tip of
previously formed cone of the shape of a straight generatrix (cone) with a whole angle
(width) of 98.6 degrees.this voltage we refer as critical voltage for electrospinning.
ff
fi
fl
fi
• For a large distance between the Emitter and the Collector the jet dries up and the mode of
current changes from Ohmic to Convective.

• The jet is then elongated by a whipping process caused by electrostatic repulsion initiated at
small bends in the bre, until it is nally deposited on the grounded collector.

• The elongation and thinning of the bres resulting from this bending instability leads to the
formation of uniform bres with nanometre-scale diameters.
fi
fi
fi
fi
The Electrospinning process can be divided into 4 Phases

1. The formation of Taylor Cone

2. Jet in Straight Line

3. Thinning of Jet occurs in the applied electric eld and bending

occurs

4. Jet Solidi cation and collection on the Collector

fi
fi
Formation of Taylor Cone
Phase I
• Sir Geo rey Ingram Taylor (1964) described the hydrostatic structure of what
we shall call the pure Taylor Cone in which the balance between the capillary
and electrostatic tress is satis ed exactly on the surface go an equipotential
cone.
ff
fi
Straight Line jet from Taylor cone
Phase II

• A jet gets ejected from the Taylor cone due to the dielectric forces acting on it.

• The jet tends to move along the electric eld lines.

• The electric eld is optimized according to the speci ed use.

• The dielectric forces accelerate the jet.

• As the jet propagated the surface area increases and evaporation of the
solution on the exposed surface of the jet occurs.
fi
fi
fi
Jet from Taylor cone
Thinning and Bending of Jet in the applied Electric field
Phase III

• After Some distance, travelling straight along the electric eld the Jet solution evaporates and
Plastic deformation due to high electric forces starts taking place resulting in ultra ne bre
diameter an unstable and whipping motion of the jet, which is generally termed as bending
instability.

• To eliminate this bending instability Near eld

Electrospinning usually works in the range of 500um to
3mm. fi
fi
fi
fi
 Jet Solidification and collection on Collector
Phase IV

• Along the trajectory the solvent evaporated and just the polymer is left
behind; this is referred as solidi cation.

• The evaporation starts from the initial point of jet ejection and increases as
the surface area increases of the jet under the dielectric forces.

• Dry bre is accumulated on the collector.

fi
fi
Parameters

Solution parameters Processing parameters Environment parameters

• Concentration • Temperature
• Voltage
• Solution viscosity
• Humidity
• Flow rate
• Molecular structure
• Emitter
• Electrical conductivity
• Surface tension
• Emitter to collector
distance
• Dielectric constant
• Volatility
• Solvant
It is important to control this process because if the solidi cation occur too fast result in loss of material
and it do not get solidify at proper time can cause the Defects in the Smoothness of the Fibres.

As Shown in the Image we can see di erent defects in the ber due to Solidi cation

A. Smooth

B. Flattened

C. Wrinkled

D. Merged ff
fi
fi
fi
Emitter
CAD
Emitter Meshing
Setting the mesh size
The resolution of computation

• Some examples where we need small elements

• Near Nozzle Tip

• Along the path of jet propagation

• Near the wall

• There are also some exceptions where we cant go beyond a limit of element size not due the
computational e orts but due to solver limitations such as in DPM Module the mesh size can
not be less the 1000% of the Discrete particle. But Most of the time It get limited due to
Computational e orts only.
ff
ff
Properties Optimization
A few key points

• We primarily had the droplet at the collector with a contact angle of 90

degrees.

• But in reality we have experimentally discovered that generally water and

solutions have a contact angle around 15 to 20 degrees.

• We have issued the uid being accelerated to be water as the concentration

of the polymer is extremely low in application.
fl
 Workload

• Simulation of the Interactions between the Maxwell Stress tensor which is a driving force in
whole process and the Surface tension which held the Liquid together.

• Optimizationof the design so that the Taylor cone is formed at the point maximum electric
eld so initially we try to focus the electric eld at the centre of the Nozzle, then after we
simulate the Electrospinning process on that selected Design in Ansys using the C program
as there is no inbuilt feature for simulation the electric forces in Ansys uent.

• The study is divided into there primary distinctions of workload

• Focusing of the Electric Field

• Simulation of Surface Forces

• Simulation of Electric forces


•
fi
fi
fl
Multiphase Model of Drop using Patching
Stabilising the meniscus of the drop
Adding the Electric forces to the liquid using a UDF
To add the electric forces UDF(user define function) is hooked to the Source term of Momentum in X and Y direction
 • #include "udf.h"
• #define ELECTRIC_POTENTIAL 0
•
• DEFINE_SOURCE(ELECTRIC_POTENTIAL,c,t,ds,eqn)
•{
• real NV_VEC(Electric_field);
• real NV_VEC(charge);
• real NV_VEC(A);
• real Maxwell_Tensor,Momentum;
• Maxwell_Tensor = 0.0;
• NV_VS(Electric_field,=,C_UDSI_G(c,t,ELECTRIC_POTENTIAL),*,-1);
• NV_VS(A,=,C_UDSI_G(c,t,ELECTRIC_POTENTIAL),*,0.00000125);
• NV_VS(charge,=,NV_D(c,t,A),*,-1);
•
• Maxwell_Tensor = NV_DOT(Electric_field,charge)-NV_DOT(Electric_field,Electric_field)*(C_UDSI_G(c,t,0.00000125))
•
• Momentum = NV_D(c,t,Maxwell_Tensor);
•
• dS[eqn] = 0.0;
• return Momentum;
•}
• }

 • #include "udf.h"
• //to include udf.h database
• #define ELECTRIC_POTENTIAL 0
• // TO DEFINE THE USER DEFINE FUNCTION
• DEFINE_SOURCE(ep,c,t,dS,eqn)
• //TO DEFINE THAT WE WANT TO ADD IN SOURCE TERM LIKE MOMENTUM
•{
• real NV_VEC(Electric_field); // DEFINE A VECTOR WITH(NV_VEC)
• real NV_VEC(charge);
• real NV_VEC(Momentum);
• real X,Y; //DEFINE SCALER
• real NV_VEC(u);

• X = 0.0; // GIVE INETIAL VALUE 0

• NV_VS(Electric_field,=,C_UDSI_G(c,t,ELECTRIC_POTENTIAL),*,-1);
• // CALCULATING THE ELECTRIC FIELD FROM POTENTIAL USING C_UDSI_G MACRO

 • NV_VS(Momentum,=,Electric_field,*,100000000);
• // MAKING FORCE FROM ELECTRIC FIELD BY MULTIPLYING IT WITH CURRENT DENSITY
• X = NV_DOT(Momentum,u);
• // MAKING THE VECTOR TO A SCALLER BY TAKING THE DOT PRODUCT
• C_UDMI(c,t,ELECTRIC_POTENTIAL) = X;
• //ALLOUTING THE UDER DEFINE MEMORY TO THE FINAL MOMENTUM WHICH WE HAVE TO ADD TO THE SOURCE
TERM
• X = Y;
• dS[eqn]= 0.0;
• // TAKING THE DERIVATIVE OF EQUATION AS ZERO BUT UNCLEAR ITS JUST GIVEN IN USER MANUAL
• return Y; }
• // RETURNING Y AS THE MAIN SCALER THAT WE HAVE TO ADD
• Up to the electric field everything is fine but we have to check the current density and the Directional vector in
which we can take the dot product of the momentum.

Electric potential contours around the drop

 Results in Ansys
As shown below there are Images of Voltage variation from 3000V to 6000V once the flow injected from the Nozzle.

Volume Fraction Volume Fraction

of ow @3000V of ow 6000V
fl
fl
RECESS