Interaction Between Webs and Rollers in Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing Process Machines

Abstract

A web can be defined as a continuous flexible strip which is supported, guided and propelled by rollers. The work presented here studies the steady state behavior of the web between rollers and treated the web span as beam with kinematic and kinetic boundary conditions at rollers. Web registration due to machine and web imperfections has been studied and the exact boundary conditions are compared with simulation and experimental results: straight web steering due to a downstream misaligned roller and a tapered roller, and cambered web steering phenomenon in spans. The interaction between webs and rollers treating the web as a plate or shell revealed a web wrapping a roller is a disturbance to a web, and normal entry condition is only valid at web center. A trough failure criterion for the laminated web is developed based upon Timoshenko's shell buckling theory. This failure criterion is employed to predict the misalignment of a roller for trough formation in a laminated web. ABAQUS/Standard finite element analysis will be used to compare the results from the closed form expressions and tests.