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Correlating nanostructure and optical properties of thin hybrid films is the crucial ingredient for designing sustainable applications ranging from structural colors in anticounterfeiting to sensors. Here, the tailoring of the refractive index of hybrid cellulose nanofibril/water-dispersed colloidal ink thin films is presented. The authors apply scalable, layer-by-layer slot-die coating for preparing the cellulose nanofibril and hybrid thin films. Making use of the mobility of the polymer chains in the colloids upon annealing, the influence of the different colloid sizes and their glass transition temperature on the refractive index of the hybrid material is shown. The complex refractive indices of the thin films are characterized by spectroscopic ellipsometry and correlated to the different nanostructures of the thin films. The authors find that post-deposition annealing changes the colloidal nanostructure from particulate to agglomerates. Depending on the size of the colloids, imbibition of the colloids into the cellulose nanofibril template is observed. This scalable approach offers new avenues in structural color functional biomaterial hybrid layers., QC 20231030

Cellulose fibrils are the structural backbone of plants and, if carefully liberated from biomass, a promising building block for a bio-based society. The mechanism of the mechanical release-fibrillation-is not yet understood, which hinders efficient production with the required reliable quality. One promising process for fine fibrillation and total fibrillation of cellulose is cavitation. In this study, we investigate the cavitation treatment of dissolving, enzymatically pretreated, and derivatized (TEMPO oxidized and carboxymethylated) cellulose fiber pulp by hydrodynamic and acoustic (i.e., sonication) cavitation. The derivatized fibers exhibited significant damage from the cavitation treatment, and sonication efficiently fibrillated the fibers into nanocellulose with an elementary fibril thickness. The breakage of cellulose fibers and fibrils depends on the number of cavitation treatment events. In assessing the damage to the fiber, we presume that microstreaming in the vicinity of imploding cavities breaks the fiber into fibrils, most likely by bending. A simple model showed the correlation between the fibrillation of the carboxymethylated cellulose (CMCe) fibers, the sonication power and time, and the relative size of the active zone below the sonication horn., Funding Agencies|Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Wallenberg Wood Science Centre; Slovenian Research Agency [P2-0401, J7-1814]

In this study, the gelation behavior of TEMPO-oxidized wood-based cellulose nanofiber (CNF) suspensions in two different glycols, ethylene glycol (EG) and propylene glycol (PG), was investigated near the overlap concentration and compared with that of aqueous CNF suspensions. The flow property of these non-aqueous and aqueous CNF suspensions was characterized by rheological, UV-vis, and rheo-optical techniques. It was found that the CNF(PG) suspensions exhibited stirring-reversible gelation behavior, where gelation could be induced simply by resting (i.e., prolonged holding time). However, this behavior was not observed for CNF(EG) and CNF(aq) suspensions. Higher temperature and higher CNF concentration could accelerate the gelation process of CNFs in PG, but no large-scale phase separation was detected by the optical techniques. Our study suggests that the reduced hydrophilic attraction between CNFs in PG is the main driving force for forming CNF-rich micro-domains, yielding a physically crosslinked network. This study suggests that the choice of solvent can be used to tailor and control the flow behavior of CNF suspensions, leading to designs of new cellulose-enabled nanocomposites for varying applications., QC 20230613

Nanocellulose is regarded as a green and renewable nanomaterial that has attracted increased attention. In this study, we demonstrate that nanocellulose materials can exhibit high thermal conductivity when their nanofibrils are highly aligned and bonded in the form of filaments. The thermal conductivity of individual filaments, consisting of highly aligned cellulose nanofibrils, fabricated by the flow-focusing method is measured in dried condition using a T-type measurement technique. The maximum thermal conductivity of the nanocellulose filaments obtained is 14.5 W/m-K, which is approximately five times higher than those of cellulose nanopaper and cellulose nanocrystals. Structural investigations suggest that the crystallinity of the filament remarkably influence their thermal conductivity. Smaller diameter filaments with higher crystallinity, that is, more internanofibril hydrogen bonds and less intrananofibril disorder, tend to have higher thermal conductivity. Temperature-dependence measurements also reveal that the filaments exhibit phonon transport at effective dimension between 2D and 3D., QC 20230613

Nanoscale building blocks of many materials exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties due to their defect-free molecular structure. Translation of these high mechanical properties to macroscopic materials represents a difficult materials engineering challenge due to the necessity to organize these building blocks into multiscale patterns and mitigate defects emerging at larger scales. Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs), the most abundant structural element in living systems, has impressively high strength and stiffness, but natural or artificial cellulose composites are 3-15 times weaker than the CNFs. Here, we report the flow-assisted organization of CNFs into macroscale fibers with nearly perfect unidirectional alignment. Efficient stress transfer from macroscale to individual CNF due to cross-linking and high degree of order enables their Young's modulus to reach up to 86 GPa and a tensile strength of 1.57 GPa, exceeding the mechanical properties of known natural or synthetic biopolymeric materials. The specific strength of our CNF fibers engineered at multiscale also exceeds that of metals, alloys, and glass fibers, enhancing the potential of sustainable lightweight high-performance materials with multiscale self-organization.

Alignment of anisotropic supermolecular building blocks is crucial to control the properties of many novel materials. In this study, the alignment process of cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) in a flow-focusing channel has been investigated using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and modeled using the Smoluchowski equation, which requires a known flow field as input. This flow field was investigated experimentally using microparticle-tracking velocimetry and by numerically applying the two-fluid level set method. A semidilute dispersion of CNFs was modeled as a continuous phase, with a higher viscosity as compared to that of water. Furthermore, implementation of the Smoluchowski equation also needed the rotational Brownian diffusion coefficient, which was experimentally determined in a shear viscosity measurement. The order of the nanofibrils was found to increase during extension in the flow-focusing channel, after which rotational diffusion acted on the orientation distribution, driving the orientation of the fibrils toward isotropy. The main features of the alignment and dealignment processes were well predicted by the numerical model, but the model overpredicted the alignment at higher rates of extension. The apparent rotational diffusion coefficient was seen to increase steeply as the degree of alignment increased. Thus, the combination of SAXS measurements and modeling provides the necessary framework for quantified studies of hydrodynamic alignment, followed by relaxation toward isotropy., QC 20160815

Cellulose nanofibrils can be obtained from trees and have considerable potential as a building block for biobased materials. In order to achieve good properties of these materials, the nanostructure must be controlled. Here we present a process combining hydrodynamic alignment with a dispersion-gel transition that produces homogeneous and smooth filaments from a low-concentration dispersion of cellulose nanofibrils in water. The preferential fibril orientation along the filament direction can be controlled by the process parameters. The specific ultimate strength is considerably higher than previously reported filaments made of cellulose nanofibrils. The strength is even in line with the strongest cellulose pulp fibres extracted from wood with the same degree of fibril alignment. Successful nanoscale alignment before gelation demands a proper separation of the timescales involved. Somewhat surprisingly, the device must not be too small if this is to be achieved.

The effect of surface tension on global stability of co-flow jets and wakes at a moderate Reynolds number is studied. The linear temporal two-dimensional global modes are computed without approximations. All but one of the flow cases under study are globally stable without surface tension. It is found that surface tension can cause the flow to be globally unstable if the inlet shear (or, equivalently, the inlet velocity ratio) is strong enough. For even stronger surface tension, the flow is restabilized. As long as there is no change of the most unstable mode, increasing surface tension decreases the oscillation frequency. Short waves appear in the high-shear region close to the nozzle, and their wavelength increases with increasing surface tension. The critical shear (the weakest inlet shear at which a global instability is found) gives rise to antisymmetric disturbances for the wakes and symmetric disturbances for the jets. However, at stronger shear, the opposite symmetry can be the most unstable one, in particular for wakes at high surface tension. The results show strong effects of surface tension that should be possible to reproduce experimentally as well as numerically., QC 20130108

The stability of a plane liquid sheet is studied experimentally and theoretically, with an emphasis on the effect of the surrounding gas. Co-blowing with a gas velocity of the same order of magnitude as the liquid velocity is studied, in order to quantify its effect on the stability of the sheet. Experimental results are obtained for a water sheet in air at Reynolds number Re-t = 3000 and Weber number We = 300, based on the half-thickness of the sheet at the inlet, water mean velocity at the inlet, the surface tension between water and air and water density and viscosity. The sheet is excited with different frequencies at the inlet and the growth of the waves in the streamwise direction is measured. The growth rate curves of the disturbances for all air flow velocities under study are found to be within 20% of the values obtained from a local spatial stability analysis, where water and air viscosities are taken into account, while previous results from literature assuming inviscid air overpredict the most unstable wavelength with a factor 3 and the growth rate with a factor 2. The effect of the air flow on the stability of the sheet is scrutinized numerically and it is concluded that the predicted disturbance growth scales with (i) the absolute velocity difference between water and air (inviscid effect) and (ii) the square root of the shear from air on the water surface (viscous effect)., QC 20110419

Papermaking is to a large extent a multiphase flow process in which the structure of the material and many of the relevant properties of the final product are determined by the interaction between water and the wood fibers. The dominant feature of a suspension composed of wood fibers and water is its inherent propensity to form bundles of mechanically entangled fibers, known as fiber flocs. However, the phenomena apparent throughout the papermaking process are not unique but in fact have a generic fluid dynamical nature., QC 20110523

Many wake flows are susceptible to self-sustained oscillations, such as the well-known von Karman vortex street behind a cylinder that makes a rope beat against a flagpole at a distinct frequency on a windy day. One appropriate method to study these global instabilities numerically is to look at the growth rates of the linear temporal global modes. If all growth rates for all modes are negative for a certain flow field then a self-sustained oscillation should not occur. On the other hand, if one growth rate for one mode is slightly positive, the oscillation will approximately obtain the frequency and shape of this global mode. In our study, we first introduce surface tension between two fluids to the wake-flow problem. Then we investigate its effects on the global linear instability of a spatially developing wake with two co-flowing immiscible fluids. The inlet profile consists of two uniform layers, which makes the problem easily parametrizable. The fluids are assumed to have the same density and viscosity, with the result that the interface position becomes dynamically important solely through the action of surface tension. Two wakes with different parameter values and surface tension are studied in detail. The results show that surface tension has a strong influence on the oscillation frequency, growth rate, and shape of the global mode(s). Finally, we make an attempt to confirm and explain the surface-tension effect based on a local stability analysis of the same flow field in the streamwise position of maximum reverse flow., QC 20110325

Experimental results on the fibre orientation in a laboratory scale headbox are reported. A steerable filter was used to determine the orientation of bleached and unbeaten birch fibres at different distances from one of the inclined walls of the headbox contraction. Due to optical limitations only low concentrations were studied. It is shown that the orientation varies with the distance from the wall. For most studied cases a more anisotropic profile was found closer to the wall., QC 20141106

A study of the flow in the direct vicinity of a forming wire and a fiber network during forming is reported. The measurements are performed with Particle Image Velocimetry in a scaled system. Index-of-refraction matching is used to gain optical access to the flow. Time resolved measurements of the flow velocity in the vertical and horizontal direction is obtained in a plane with a size of 60 × 40 fiber diameters. The spatial resolution is 2 fiber diameters. Data is obtained for three drainage velocities and two different lengths of the fibers. The relative level of the velocity fluctuations are found to decrease with drainage velocity and is higher in the flow above a network mat of shorter fibers compared to the network made of longer fibers. The size of the flow structures is obtained by spectral analysis and compared for the six cases., QC 20141017

The purpose of this experimental work was to study the influence of shear close to a solid boundary on the fibre orientation in suspensions with different fibre aspect ratios and concentrations. We have studied a laminar suspension flow down an inclined plate. The fibre orientation in different wall parallel planes were measured. We applied an index-of-refraction (IR) matching method together with particle tracking techniques to obtain the fibre motion. The fibre orientation was extracted using a two-dimensional wavelet transform. The shear flow resulted in fibres perpendicularly oriented to the streamwise direction (rollers) in the near wall region. These rollers were observed in the experiment to perform a rolling-sliding motion down the inclined plate around a stable perpendicular orientation. As the distance to the wall increased the number of rollers decreased and the fibre orientation was unaffected from its initial streamwise orientation. As the aspect ratio increased the influence of shear on the fibre orientation decreased for all measured wall parallel planes. This was also the case for higher fibre concentrations. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the development of the capacity to control the sheet network structure in papermaking., QC 20100525

An image analysis method is described, based on a two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform, for the study of fibre Suspension flocculation. Images of a fibre Suspension are cross-correlated with two-dimensional Mexican hat wavelets. The inner fibre floc structure information can be obtained by comparing the signals after the transforms using different scales of the two-dimensional Mexican hat wavelets. Centres of fibre floes can be obtained by finding the local maximum signal peaks in the transform. Simulated floes images and real fibre suspension images are analysed with the wavelet transform as well as quantification of sheet structure in paper sheets. Some applications of this image analysis method are also discussed., QC 20100525

This paper deals with the fundamental mechanisms that control partial roll dewatering in papermaking. The flow around the forming cylinder is modelled in a cylindrical coordinate system and the wire is assumed to be impermeable. The governing equations are reduced based on a discussion where the magnitude of the different terms is estimated. Given this reduced set of equations a non-linear equation for the position of the wire is deduced. This clearly shows that one of the most important parameters is the Weber number, We, which is the non-dimensional number that can be obtained by comparing the effect of wire tension in relation to the momentum of the incoming headbox jet. The characteristics of the non-linear equation are discussed and the equation is linearized around the trivial solution to the equations, which gives that the wire is displaced a constant distance from the roll along the whole wrap. The linear equation has a standing wave solution with a specific wavelength that scales with We. This solution is compared to previously measured profiles regarding the wavelength of the waves., QC 20100525

Pressure and wire position measurements have been performed in an experimental facility, the KTH-Former, which intends to model the roll-forming zone of a paper machine. The measured pressure distributions in the forming zone are shown to have more complex patterns than the simple model p=T/R, which normally is referred to as the nominal pressure. It is also shown that an increase in wire tension has a similar effect as a decrease in flow-rate on the shape of the pressure distribution. This is a consequence of that the flow to a large extent is governed by the relation between the dynamic pressure and the nominal pressure. For the case of partial dewatering the suction peak that appears at the roll-wire separation point has a strong influence on the pressure distribution upstream. Finally, it is shown that the drainage has a stabilizing effect on the dewatering pressure., QC 20100525. Tidigare titel: Experimental studies on partial dewatering during roll forming of paper

QS 20120313

QS 20120313

It is believed that the characteristics of a headbox jet are of vital importance for the formation in the final paper sheet. To better understand the physics of free, plane liquid jets, experiments have been made with wafer emanating from two different nozzles: a plane channel flow nozzle where viscous effects are of importance; and a slid nozzle, which closely approximates art inviscid jet. Both types of flow have been visualized and the visualization of the jet emanating from a channel showed that a strong streamwise streaky structure was created inside the jet a distance downstream the nozzle. These streaks do not originate from the nozzle but instead from the break-lip of two-dimensional waves on the jet travelling in the streamwise direction. This streaky structure could not be found at any velocity (<15 m/s) in the jet from the slit nozzle., QC 20100525

Steerable filters are concluded to be useful in order to determine the orientation of fibres captured in digital images. The fibre orientation is a key variable in the study of flowing fibre suspensions. Here digital image analysis based on a filter within the class of steerable filters is evaluated for suitability of finding the position and orientation of fibres suspended in flowing suspensions. In sharp images with small noise levels the steerable filter succeeds in determining the orientation of artificially generated fibres with well-defined angles. The influence of reduced image quality on the orientation has been quantified. The effect of unsharpness and noise is studied and the results show that the error in orientation is less than 1◦ for moderate levels. A set of images with fibres suspended in a shear flow is also analyzed. The fibre orientation distribution is determined in the flow-vorticity plane. In this analysis a comparison is also made to a robust, but computationally more expensive, method involving convolutions with an oriented elliptic filter. A good agreement is found when comparing the resulting fibre orientation distributions obtained with the two methods., QC 20100706

Steerable filters are concluded to be useful in order to determine the orientation of fibres captured in digital images. The fibre orientation is a key variable in the study of flowing fibre suspensions. Here digital image analysis based on a filter within the class of steerable filters is evaluated for suitability of finding the position and orientation of fibres suspended in flowing suspensions. In sharp images with small noise levels the steerable filter succeeds in determining the orientation of artificially generated fibres with well-defined angles. The influence of reduced image quality on the orientation has been quantified. The effect of unsharpness and noise is studied and the results show that the error in orientation is less than 1◦ for moderate levels. A set of images with fibres suspended in a shear flow is also analyzed. The fibre orientation distribution is determined in the flow-vorticity plane. In this analysis a comparison is also made to a robust, but computationally more expensive, method involving convolutions with an oriented elliptic filter. A good agreement is found when comparing the resulting fibre orientation distributions obtained with the two methods., QC 20100706

QC 20101021

Steerable filters are concluded to be useful in order to determine the orientation of fibres captured in digital images. The fibre orientation is a key variable in the study of flowing fibre suspensions. Here digital image analysis based on a filter within the class of steerable filters is evaluated for suitability of finding the position and orientation of fibres suspended in flowing suspensions. In sharp images with small noise levels the steerable filter succeeds in determining the orientation of artificially generated fibres with well-defined angles. The influence of reduced image quality on the orientation has been quantified. The effect of unsharpness and noise is studied and the results show that the error in orientation is less than 1◦ for moderate levels. A set of images with fibres suspended in a shear flow is also analyzed. The fibre orientation distribution is determined in the flow-vorticity plane. In this analysis a comparison is also made to a robust, but computationally more expensive, method involving convolutions with an oriented elliptic filter. A good agreement is found when comparing the resulting fibre orientation distributions obtained with the two methods., QC 20100706