Single Screw Extruder Design Calculations using MatLab and Visual Basic

Abstract

Computer and its applications have entered various fields of applied sciences and engineering, for instance, Computer Aided Design (CAD) is being efficiently used for devices and equipment design, reducing the design calculations complexity in reliable manner. Regarding to food engineering, which deals with devices, equipment and food substances together, it uses in order to facilitate and accelerate the process of conducting engineering calculations. This study aimed to use specific computer programs, namely MatLab and Visual Basic, to develop a software system to audit the complex design calculations of single screw extruder. Extrusion is defined simply as the act of forcing something through an orifice, it is finding ever-increasing application in the food industry, such as the production of ready-to-eat cereals, pasta, snacks, pet food, fish foods, and confectionary products, apart from its obvious applications in the plastics industry. The results of this study might be later used in unit operation laboratories, or in food processing equipment manufacturing plants in general. For this purpose, using engineering equations of this extruder, the necessary algorithm was created and then the codes were written for each program. After that, interfaces were opened, and then they were supplied with all necessary components to perform calculations as required. To verify and estimate the proposed system, the traditional manual calculation methods were used to obtain reliable results first, and then MATLAB and Visual Basic programs were used to generate these calculations. The experimental results have expressed that the required engineering computational results, that required to design of single screw extruder, according to the input data were found. A comparison study was carried out between the results obtained traditionally and those obtained using the MATLAB and Visual Basic programs; also engineering calculations for other extruders were performed with different data in the same manner. It was found that the accuracy and speedily results of these operations were confirmed.