Rotordynamical simulations of a fibre refiner during production

A key component in panel board production is the refiner, whose task is to break raw cellulose wood chips into slender fibres, done by a relative angular motion between stator and rotor. The main problem in predicting the dynamics of these machines is to model the complicated fibre breaking process, since the refining process leads to a three-phase flow (solid wood, water and steam) between the stator and rotor. By modelling the rotor as a rigid body, the process can only contribute by a resulting force and a resulting moment. Through this approach and axial force measurements, it has been shown that the refining process can be treated as a time dependent stiffness matrix and external load. The objective for this paper is to predict and explain dynamical characteristics of fibre refiners during production in such a way that the results can be used already at early stages of the product development process. Two different pressure distribution cases are studied, i.e. one axisymmetric with only radial variations and one non-axisymmetric. It is found that the axisymmetric case only excited forward modes, while the non-axisymmetric case excited all modes. The time dependent stiffness matrix resulted in unstable domains, but also in stable domains with intermittent high amplitudes.