Taper Tension Control in Winding

Winding converts flat web into roll form and typically there are 3 types of winding as the following:

Winding methods

Among them, center wind method is the commonly used one.

Winding problems

  • Telescoping
  • starring
Starring defect (left) and telescoping (left); ref 1

Taper tension control

There are four ways to control web tension:

  • Constant tension. Tension remains constant during whole tension control process. The problem is the outmost layers of the wound roll is too tight which might lead to starring defects (internal stress)
  • Constant torque. Under this mode, the outmost layer can be too loose which may lead to telescoping defects.
  • Linear taper tension control
  • Hyperbolic Taper tension control

Tape tension control can mitigate the above problems; the key is to control the tension profile and the internal tangential stress as a result, as shown below schematically.

Ref 2

Taper tension equations

R is r and Rn is max diameter; T is tension

t is the taper and its value is between 0 and 1. The following is the tension taper profile for the four cases:

Ref 2

accordingly the internal stress distribution are

refer to Ref 2 for the calculation

Taper tension control is a trade-off between constant tension and constant torque; it indeed mitigates telescoping and starring defects; however isostress is still not achieved by simple lineal or hyperbolic taper tension control as shown in the above picture.

Linear taper profile works better for small wound rolls, r=R/R0<2); Ref 2
Taper value on telescoping

Advanced taper tension control

Alfa is the hybrid factor; r is diameter ratio R/Ro as in the above sections

If Alfa=1, it is linear tension taper profile and it is hyperbolic if alfa is 0.

  • For small rolls (R/R0<2), linear taper tension is effective in controlling telescoping
  • For large rolls (R/R0>2), hyperbolic is better in controlling internal stress.
  • Therefore alfa should be close to 0 for small rolls and 1 for large rolls.

Rule of thumb in tension control

It is recommended to set taper larger than 40% for large rolls (R/R0>2) and set taper less tan 40% for small rolls (max roll diameter/R0<2)

Effect of advanced taper profile for mitigating telescoping (ref 1)

Linear taper profile is still best for mitigating telescope in small rolls while advanced taper profile has the best overall performance.

Reference

  1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2012.03.005
  2. DOI: 10.1177/0040517514538697