In today’s spinning technology, at least 4 types of spinning systems are commercially available. These are the traditional ring spinning, rotor spinning, airjet spinning and friction spinning. Among them, ring spinning stands alone in providing high quality yarn suitable for any type of textile end product. Other more recent systems enjoy much higher production speed than traditional ring spinning, but yarn quality restricts their use to only narrow ranges of textile products. The primary technological limitation of ring spinning lies in the speed of the ring-traveler system. The traveler is a C-shaped thin piece of metal that is used for a limited period of time, disposed, and replaced on frequent basis. Three specific issues must be addressed to overcome this limitation:
· the dependence of the yarn linear speed (or delivery speed) on the rotational speed of the traveler
· the continuous need to stabilize yarn tension during spinning and the dependence of this stability on the traveler speed
· the impact of traveler speed on fiber behavior in the spinning triangle
Research to date has only provided about a 15% improvement in traveler speed without affecting the traveler/ring contact thermal load capacity. Ring spinning is still at a production rate disadvantage of 15 to 20 times in comparison with other spinning systems. Therefore, the challenging issue is how to break the traditional paradigm of ring spinning and revolutionize its principle in such a way that very high speed can be achieved without sacrificing the traditional quality of ring spun yarns.
Our design approach is to totally eliminate the traveler from the ring spinning system and replacing it with a magnetically suspended lightweight annular disc that rotates in a carefully pre-defined magnetic field (See Figure below). By creating a non-touching environment of the rotating element for ring spinning this system provides a super high spinning rotation without the limitations of the current traveler system.
Finite element system simulation
We are simulating the magnetic system using a magnetic finite element package. The magnetic field strength distribution on different system components shows the supporting forces exerted on the rotor part (See Figure below).
Our first estimate is that these forces are 25 N in the radial direction and 15 N in the axial direction. We are seeking more axial stiffness of the rotor.
Contributing Graduate Students: Gangumalla Yamshi Reddy, Jayendra S. Dabahde (Auburn).
Industry Interactions: 2 [Unifi, Velcro] Academic non-NTC Interactions: 2
Project Web Address: http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~fhady/magnetic-report.htm
Faissal Abdel-Hady, a Research Assistant Professor of Textile Engineering at Auburn since 1998 and an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Ain Shams (Egypt), earned a B.S in 1975 and M. S. in 1981 there and a Ph.D. in 1988 at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Saint Etienne (France), all in mechanical engineering. Faissal then was a manager in industrial software for Hicon France. His research interests include thermal analysis. stress simulation, automatic control and mechatronics, mechanical components, CAD/CAM for filament wound structures, dynamic signal processing and software development.
S00-AE06, F01 -AE02*, S01 -AE32 fhady@eng.auburn.edu
(334)-844-5471 http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~fhady
By replacing the traveler in ring spinning
with a disc that rotates in a magnetic field,
we hope to maintain
the high quality of ring spun yarn,
but at much higher speeds.
