Article ID: ISIJINT-2025-031
Flotation dryer systems are widely used to dry liquid layers on substrates such as films, paper and steel strips, and many reports discussing design optimization for better heat transfer characteristics and strip stability are available.
As an advantage of this type of system, surface defects caused by contact between a support roll and the strip are prevented by floating the strip with a jet flow. However, since the friction force between the jet flow and the strip is smaller than that between a support roll and strip, flotation systems are prone to strip walking.
This tendency is noticeable in case of bad shape strip. Thus, it is important to improve the strip centering force. To our knowledge, no systematic in-depth study on prediction of the strip centering force with flotation dryers exists in the literature, and in particular, literature which compares experimental and analytical results is very rare.
In the present study, the centering force acting on a steel strip in a flotation dryer was investigated by experiments and simplified two-dimensional fluid analyses in order to evaluate the influence of the side plate geometry and the off-center value from the center of the floatation dryer on the centering force.
The centering force in the experiment and analysis showed a good correlation. Therefore, it is thought that the centering performance of actual floatation dryers can be estimated by simplified experiments and analyses.
