RÉSUMÉ

The flocking process is an important process in latex glove industry and has complicated the two-phase flow phenomenon. At present, waste from this process is about 35%. This paper presents a numerical study of flock particle flow inside the flock cabinet using commercial software of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Thirteen flocking process models were simulated. Flow inside a flock cabinet was modeled in the three-dimensional domain. The standard k-ε model with standard wall functions was solved for the continuous phase while the discrete phase was modeled based on the Lagrange approach and stochastic tracking with Discrete Random Walk (DRW). Volume fraction of flock was set to be less than 10% and the effect of particle interaction on the particle trajectory was neglected. The drag and gravity forces were accounted in the equation of motion for particles. The experiment was performed to validate the simulation results. In the experiment, a flock cabinet was built from 8-mm-thick, 1074.5-mm-wide, and 833.5-mm-long Perspex sheet with a height of 1180 mm. The inlet hydraulic diameter was 0.5081 m. The uniform flock with an equivalence diameter of 50 μm was injected into the cabinet at the rate of 0.01 kg/s. Velocity, pressure, trajectory, and accretion of flock particles were measured. From the results obtained, it was found that the experimental results agreed well with those from simulation. The implement of a numerical method found that the damper position and angle adjustment can therefore be used to improve the efficiency of the flocking process. Installing the damper at −40° and placing it at bottom positions have increased flock particle accretion on the glove surface by 15%. Besides, it can reduce flock waste up to 29% of the present process.