Numerical Simulation of Electrified Jets: An Application to Electrospinning

This paper concerns the numerical simulation of electrified jets with application to the electrospinning process for the fabrication of fibers with controllable size, diameter, and cross section shape. Most numerical models used to simulate electrospinning rely on the Upper Convected Maxwell model (UCM) which is fit to model polymer melts. However, in most electrospinning processes the fluid is a polymer solution with a Newtonian solvent that evaporates after the fiber is deposited on the collector. In this work we propose to describe the fluid rheology using Giesekus model, which predicts the properties of polymer solutions more accurately, and show the impact of the rheological model on the prediction of the fiber radius and size.