Spinning processes for fibers, filaments and nonwovens differ in their mechanism to draw the melt or solution to generate the resulting fiber diameter. On the one hand there are processes like spunbond or staple fibers where simply the spinning speed in relation to the hole throughput determines the diameter which is typically above 10 microns. On the other hand there are processes like electrospinning or meltblown where additional acceleration steps lead to much finer diameters down to submicron or nano fibers. Their productivity in fine fiber generation enables a wide spectrum of nonwoven-based filtration applications.

In this paper we discuss the modeling and simulation of electrospinning and meltblown concerning the filament dynamics in these processes....