Vol. 2, No. 2, 2007

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Behavior of paper on a high speed conveyor subjected to air jet impingement: a method for estimating bending stiffness

M. K. Ramasubramanian, Richard A. Venditti and Kalyan C. Katuri

Vol. 2 (2007), No. 2, 201–219
Abstract

Stiffness based sorting of mixed paper waste at high speed is desirable for sorting board, cardstock, and paper from each other for efficient recycling. We propose a quick, non-contact method for measuring the relative stiffness of paper samples moving on a conveyor at high speeds. The method consists of impinging an air jet on a moving paper sample while it is crossing a gap during transfer from one conveyor belt to another. The deflection caused by the impinging air jet can be measured and used to categorize different grades of paper. In this paper, we report results from a simulation of the proposed method using a finite element model. Influence of conveyor speed, sample orientation and nozzle pressure is studied using the model. Results indicate that the stiffness estimation has sufficient resolution to distinguish between board and paper grades at high conveyor speeds.

Keywords
paper recycling, bending stiffness, paper sorting, copy paper, finite element model, cardboard
Milestones
Received: 6 June 2006
Accepted: 28 August 2006
Published: 1 April 2007
Authors
M. K. Ramasubramanian
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
1217 Broughton Hall, Campus Box 7910
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-7910
United States
http://www.mae.ncsu.edu/homepages/ram/index.html
Richard A. Venditti
Department of Wood and Paper Science
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-7910
United States
http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/users/r/richardv/www
Kalyan C. Katuri
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-7910
United States