The SIGMA simulation software is a joint research project between leading industrial companies and Kunststofftechnik Paderborn. The programme is used to simulate preparation and processing procedures on co-rotating twin-screw extruders. As in the previous year, the user meeting took place on 17 February as a hybrid event at which users could choose to participate either on site in Paderborn or via Microsoft Teams. Kunststofftechnik Paderborn presented the new SIGMA version 15.0 and the new features it contains to the project partners.
These include technical software improvements, such as a drastic reduction in calculation time through the parallelisation of processes, improved usability of the software and the elimination of several bugs. Furthermore, the development of an extended mixture quality determination using SIGMA3D was presented, which works in parallel to the existing particle tracking and the assessment of the disperse mixture quality. In addition, the automatic process optimisation presented at last year's user meeting was extensively revised in terms of both the range of functions and the efficiency of the target search. Also presented were an improved method for calculating the enthalpy of semi-crystalline thermoplastics and the use of an adapted flow temperature for amorphous thermoplastics, which go hand in hand with the new version of the Paderborn Material Database (PAM). Ianus Simulation GmbH also presented the development and progress of 3D CFD simulation of two-phase flows.
The event ended with a presentation of the outstanding work scheduled for the delivery of SIGMA 15.1 in the coming year. This includes the development of modular software documentation, enabling the creation of mixtures of three components, the improvement and expansion of process optimisation to include further target variables and the implementation of complete mixture quality determination in SIGMA.
Company representatives from BASF, Coperion, Evonik and KraussMaffei Extrusion were present on site, while Brückner Maschinenbau, C.A. PICARD, Covestro Leistritz, Lindauer Dornier, Reifenhäuser Extrusion Systems and the University of Bayreuth took part in the user meeting online.
