A computer study of film blowing

This paper extends Petrie's work on film-blowing to cover viscoelastic non-isothermal flow for both the convected Maxwell and the Leonov models. Good agreement with experimental data is shown for the former. The calculations are highly unstable, however, and it is difficult to obtain convergence with arbitrary values of the film-blowing parameters. The general effect of viscoelasticity is to stiffen the film and restrain the increase in bubble diameter. There is some difference between bubble shapes generated using the Maxwell and Leonov constitutive models but the temperature variation of properties is seen as the dominant effect, The Leonov model tends not to be stiff enough in its response to the present flow, which is purely extensional and good agreement with experiment was not obtained. For the Maxwell model the relevant mean relaxation time must be used for good agreement between experiment and calculation.