High Speed Wire Coating by Withdrawal

From a Bath of Viscoelastic Liquid

STANLEY MIDDLE MAN

Departments of Chemical Engineering

and
Polymer Science and Engineering
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts 01003
Data are presented for the thickness H , of liquid coating
entrained by continuous withdrawal at speed U of a wire of
radius R from the free surface of a large bath. For Newtonian
fluids of viscosity p, density p , and surface tension u,the data
are carried out to coating speeds beyond the applicability of
current theories, to Capillary numbers of nearly one hundred. In
the high speed range the data, which cover several orders of
magnitude in viscosity, can be well represented by the equation

for U p l m = N c a > 3. All data presented are at an essentially

constant Goucher number of 0.08, where N,, = R ( p g 1 2 ~ ) ~ .
Data for viscoelastic fluids show phenomena quite distinct,
qualitatively and quantitatively, from Newtonian observations.
In particular, strongly elastic fluids show a markedly reduced
ability to be entrained onto the wire. Further, the coating
thickness appears to become independent ofcapillary number
at high speed.

INTRODUCTION
his paper is concerned with the thickness of liquid
T c o a t i n g which can be entrained by a wire or filament
withdrawn vertically through the free surface of a large
quiescent liquid bath. Figure 1 shows the features of the
system of interest, which might form a model of industrial systems for use in producing solid plastic coatings

on wires, or for putting finish solutions onto textile

fibers prior to dyeing and/or processing into fabric.
Prior studies of this and related problems exist (I),
which provide background and motivation for the
present work reported here. The major contributions of
this paper are experimental and extend previous studies
(2, 3) to higher speed coating (higher Capillary number)
including coating of viscoelastic solutions. It is shown
that elasticity leads to order of magnitude reductions in
coating thickness by comparison to Newtonian fluids.

EXPERIMENTAL

meniscus
region

I
I - 4

coating

bath

POLYMER ENGINEERING A N D SCIENCE, APRIL, 1978, Vol. 18, N o . 5

The coating tank was a box 10 x 10 x 9 cm. Nylon

monofilament of diameter 0.0524 cm was drawn through
the tank from a reel, onto a takeup roll driven by a
constant speed motor. Figure 2 shows a sketch of the
systern .
Physical properties of the fluids studied are given in
Table 1. Rheological data for the polymer solutions are
presented in Figs. 3 and 4 .
One set of data was obtained with glycerine at subambient temperatures (down to 3.3C), producing viscosities as high as 83 poise.
Monofilament speeds were in the range of 3 to 86 cm/s
(6 to 170 ft/min).
Coating thickness was measured photographically.
High speed flash photographs were taken using a 35 mm
355

Stanley Middleman
100

feed reel

C n : : p

reel

10

coated
wire

u)
.-

-a
0

Ly

camera

It
I

0.

I00

10

coating bath

Table 1. Physical Properties of the Fluids Studied (25C)

I4

Paraffin oil
Glycerine F
Glycerine E
80% Glycerine
Polyhall 295
0.1%
0.25%
0.5%
0.75%
1.5%
POlyOX 301
0.5%
0.75%
1.0%

P9

(T,

poise

glcm3 dynelcm

0.46
10
8.6
0.61
10
48
160
350
820
1.1
6.6
23

0.86
1.26
1.26
1.21
1
1

1
1
1
1
1
1

Symbol on
Fig. 5

26.5
64.9
64.9
70.7
72.5
72.5
68.6
66.5
67.0
62.4
62.0
62.0

v
A

n
U

e
iLi
A

Polyhall is a water soluble polyacrylamide.

Polyox is a water soluble polyethylene oxide.
Viscosity for the polymer solutions is the zero-shear viscosity.

Nikon camera with close-up attachments. Negatives

were projected and measurements taken from the enlarged projected images. All liquids used were transparent, and the nylon monofilament could be clearly seen in
each picture. From the known diameter of the monofilament the measured enlarged coating diameter could
be converted to the actual coating thickness. The coating
thickness H , is shown in Fig. 1 .

RESULTS
Data are correlated in dimensionless terms using the
following definitions:
Coating thickness

D,

= H,(pg/a)

(1)

NCa = p U / a
(2)
Figure 5 shows the theoretical curves of White and
Tallmadge ( 3 ) ,believed to be the best available theory
relating coating thickness to speed of withdrawal. The
theory is limited in two respects. It is, first of all, a low
Capillary number

356

10

i(s-1)

I o2

I o3

F i g . 4 . Pri rn (1 r!/ ti o m i a / .c tress coeffic irti t-sli eci r r(ite dn I (I f o r

, S ( J I , I ~of the . f l i t i d s strtdietf. Same ,s!ynihl !iv!/ ( 1 , ~it1 Fig. , 3 ,

speed (non-inertial) theory, which cannot be extrapolated with any confidence to high speed coating beyond
a Capillary number of approximately 0.5. All of the data
presented herein, and the region of dominant commerPOLYMER ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE, APRIL, 1978, Vol. 18, No. 5

High Speed Wire Coating by Withdruwul From

0.01

0.I

100

10

Nca

1000

=*
0-

Fig.5 . Dimelisionless correlation ofcoating thickness as a function of wire speed. See Tuble 1 f o r key to .symbols.

cia1 interest, are at high Capillary numbers. The second

limitation of the theory is with regard to rheological
properties: it is strictly a Newtonian theory.
The theory predicts a dependence on the Goucher
number, defined as
NGo

R(pg/2a)l2

(3)

This is the only parameter containing the filament

radius. All of our data are at nearly constant values ofNGo
in the range of 0.07 to 0.08. For the p a r f i n oil the
Goucher number is 0.1
It can be seen, from Fig. 5, that the Newtonian data
are in reasonably good correspondence with the theory
at the smallest Capillary numbers. The data obtained
with the polymer solutions, particularly the more elastic
polyacrylamide solutions, depart markedly from the
Newtonian data.

DISCUSSION
Newtonian Data
As the Capillary number gets large the data show a
power dependence which may be written as

D,

= 0.15N:S

(N(.,,> 3)

(4)

No other wire coating data are available for comparison to or confirmation of this result. Data are available,
however, for coating entrained by withdrawal of a flat
film from a bath (4)which also suggest a similar square
root dependence ofD, on Capillary number, and which
may be represented by

D,

0.8Nii,2

( N c , > 3)

(5)

A flat film may be regarded as a cylinder of very small

curvature (large radius), and the Goucher number provides a dimensionless ratio of curvature of the meniscus
(given appro,;mately by (2a/pg)-*) to the curvature of
the cylinder (Mi). Thus Ey 5 may be regarded as the
upper limit on wire coating, for large wires, i.e., the
infinite Goucher number limit. All of the data for which
E q 4 serves were obtained at a Goucher number of 0.08.
There is some evidence, both in theory and experiment, that an inertial effect can produce a reduction in
the dependence ofD, onWr.rr,to an extent depending on
a parameter y defined as
y = a(p/p4g)3

(6)

Both the theory and supporting data (5)are for the flat
POLYMER ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE, APRIL, 1978, Vol. 18, No. 5

ci

Buth of Viscoelustic Liquid

film case, but one would presume that the idea pertains
to wire coating as well. We see no evidence of inertial
effects in our data, presumably because of the relatively
high viscosity of the fluids used. At the highest Capillary
numbers we calculate a value of y of 0.02 which is too
small, according to theory and evidence, to exhibit this
inertial effect.
It would appear, then, that the Newtonian data
presented are consistent with available related observations. The data are limited in two respects:
Only a single filament diameter was investigated,
giving a Goucher number of 0.08.
The high Capillary number data were obtained
with high viscosity fluids, and so show no inertial effects.
Viscoelastic Data
From the normal stress data ofFig. 4 , it is apparent
that the polyacrylamide solutions are generally more
elastic than the polyethylene oxide solutions. Normal
stresses were not measurable in t h e 0.5 percent
polyethylene oxide solution, which may also be seen
(Fig. 3 ) to be only mildly non-Newtonian. We note in
Fig. 5 that the 0.5 percent polyethylene oxide data fall in
with the Newtonian data, when the zero-shear viscosity
is used in calculating N c n .
One of the difficulties in presenting Fig. 5 for nonNewtonian fluids lies in the lack of a well-defined shear
rate for this flow field. It is not clear how to define the
viscosity appropriate to this flow, and so the magnitude
of the Capillary number is subject to some arbitrary
definition of the shear rate at which the viscosity should
be evaluated. In Fig. 5, all non-Newtonian data are
plotted using the zero-shear viscosity.
The use of any other viscosity would shift any particular set of viscoelastic data horizontally and toward the
left along the N c a axis. Since viscosity does not appear
in D , there would be no vertical shift of the data. Thus,
while it might be possible to displace some sets of viscoelastic data into coincidence with the Newtonian data,
it is not clear that this could be done in an unequivocal
manner, based on an a priori rational choice of viscosity
for each fluid. Indeed, it is clear that no shift in the data
for 1.5 percent polyacrylamide will cause these data to
resemble a Newtonian fluid, especially if the data are
shifted toward the left.
It would appear, then, that the effect of significant
viscoelasticity is to reduce entrainment of liquid by the
filament. The extent of reduction can be as much as an
order of magnitude. Perhaps the most interesting aspect
of the behavior of viscoelastic fluids is the attainment, at
high speed, of an essentially constant, limiting, value of
coating thickness, independent o f f l a m e n t speed. Ifsuch
a result turns out to be generally observed in other
viscoelastic fluids, it has significant implications for
process operability.
Of course, the presence of an asymptotic upper limit
to coating thickness has obvious consequences in process design. Independence ofD, from N ( . , , however, has
additional consequences. For example, one would expect the process to be insensitive to fluctuations in line
speed U and, to a large extent, insensitive to modest
357

Stanley Middleman
changes in temperature. Normally, temperature
changes would affect viscosity strongly, altering the
Capillary number. For a Newtonian fluid this would
lead to significant changes in coating thickness.
Despite the fact that the polyacrylamide solutions
cover a wide range of viscous and elastic properties, the
data suggest an asymptotic value of D, within a very
narrow range, nearly independent of polymer concentration. More data will be required before this feature
can be elucidated clearly and quantitatively. The qualitative implications and features are apparent, however.
One might speculate, at this point, on the mechanism
responsible for the observed results. It may lie in the
character of the entrainment region, which may be regarded as a stretching flow with a short timescale Lagrangian transient. Over a distance of the order of the
meniscus height, fluid elements are accelerated from
near rest to the filament speed. We may estimate an
order of magnitude of the stretch rates that the fluids
studied have been subjected to. The static meniscus
height is given roughly by the value of

(2)
1 /2

Hu

For these data H u is approximately 0.2 cm. The dynamic

meniscus is larger than this, a reasonable estimate being
about 0.5 cm. At 50 cm/s wire speed (a median value for
these data), an approximate stretch rate would be given
by
i = U / H u = 100s-
(8)
The inverse of this stretch rate gives a rough measure of
the time scale of the deformation imposed on the fluid,
or
td =

10-2s

(9)

The question of whether this deformation is short

depends on the ratio oftn to some appropriate relaxation
time for the fluid, A. In effect this comparison introduces
the Deborah number,

N i m = utd

(10)

A large Deborah number process is one in which the

deformation has a very short time scale in comparison to
the characteristic fluid time. X. It is well established that

358

a viscoelastic fluid will show essentially elastic behavior

in a large Deborah number process, and viscous behavior at the opposite extreme.
The relaxation times of the polyacrylamide solutions
are of the order of one second, and larger. Hence we see
that our experiments in the region of asymptotic coating
thickness correspond to a very large Deborah number
process. Thus the observation that relatively little viscous entrainment occurs seems explicable in these terms.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The bulk of the data presented here was obtained in
undergraduate research projects carried out by Thomas
Mumley and Samuel November. Financial support was
provide by the Materials Research Laboratory of the
Polymer Science and Engineering Department, and by
Eastman Kodak Company.

NOMENCLATURE

D,

= dimensionless coating thickness on wire

= acceleration of gravity (cm/s2)

= ( m / p g ) l @length scale for meniscus height (cm)

= equilibrium coating thickness on wire (cm)
= p U / u Capillary number

h/tDDeborah number
R(pg/2u)lRGoucher number
= wire radius (cm)
= time scale of deformation (s)
= wire speed (cm/s)
= 0-/(p/p4g)lGinertial parameter
= stretch rate (s-l)
= fluid relaxation time (s)
= viscosity (poise)
= density (g/cm3)
= surface tension (dyne/cm)

=
=

REFERENCES
1. J. A . Tallrnaclge and C. Gutfinger, Znd. E n g . Chem., 59, 19
(1967).
2. D. A. White and J. A. Tallmadge, A Z C h E J . , 12, 333 (1966).
3. D. A. White and J. A. Tallmadge, AZChEJ., 13, 745 (1967).
4. R. P. Spiers, C. V. Subbaraman, a n d W. L. Wilkinson, Cheni.
E n g . Sci., 29, 389 (1974); 30, 379 (1975).
5. M. N. Esmail arid R. L. Hrimmel, AZChEJ., 21, 958 (1975).

POLYMER ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE, APRIL, 1978, Vol. 18, No. 5