Neural network model for paper forming process

Paper is made by a continuous high-speed filtration drainage of an aqueous suspension of fibres. This article presents a new approach to the controllable simulation of paper forming, using artificial neural network methods. The model incorporates dynamics of the forming process, like turbulence, drainage speed and preferential drainage through earlier less-dense regions, and fibre properties like propensity to clump or "flocculate", fibre flexibility and concentration of fibres in the suspension. Results for monofibre layer structures are described, showing effects of turbulence and its decay during drainage in causing clumping or "flocculation". The commercial process has as one of its main goals, the reduction to tolerable levels of the nonuniformity in mass distribution resulting from flocculation. The new model yields data corresponding to that obtainable along arbitrary scanning lines in planar stochastic fibrous structures, providing profiles, variances and histograms of local areal density, histograms of local free fibre lengths. These results closely resemble experimental data from commercial paper samples, obtained from radiographic or optical transmission images subjected to image analysis.