Extrusion foaming, which can continuously produce polymeric
foams with cell size ranges from few micrometers to hundreds
micrometers, is a main method for the industrial production of
thermoplastic foams. Traditional extrusion foaming uses longchain
blowing agent such as CFCs and HCFCs which has been
restricted because of their environmentally hazardness [1]. In
recent years, supercritical carbon dioxide (sc-CO2) was found to be
a promising blowing agent and had been widely used in batch
foaming, extrusion foaming and injection foaming due to its
economical, non-flammable, non-toxic and environmentally
friendly attributes [2]. Generally, there are four steps in extrusion
foaming process using sc-CO2 as blowing agent including: 1. injection
of sc-CO2 into the extruder barrel; 2. blending of sc-CO2 into
polymer melt to make a homogenous solution under continuous
screw rotation; 3. polymer/sc-CO2 solution flowing through the
extruder die; 4. CO2 expansion and polymer stabilizing. Step 3 and
4 are sometimes combined since it is believed that foaming occurs
once the polymer/gas solution exit the die [3]. During the whole
process, the foaming is triggered by the state conversion of CO2
which is determined by the drop of pressure. The initial stage of scCO2
phase conversion is crucial for the foaming process since it
triggers the formation of cell nucleus, namely cell nucleation procedure.
In reality, the cell nucleation occurs somewhere within the
extrusion die where the local pressure drops to the phase conversion
pressure of CO2 from supercritical state to gas state [4].
However, the foaming process is not observable until the material
exits the extrusion die where the pressure already researched
ambient level. Thus, the most important stage in extrusion foaming
remains a black box with the inputs of processing parameters such
as temperature, sc-CO2 content, screw rotation speed, and the
outputs of the morphologies and properties of the extruded foams.
Efforts have been made to develop visualization systems to revel
what really happens in this transition stage. To accomplish visualization
characterization of the foaming process, equipment based
on X-ray radioscopy [5e7], neutron radiography [8], ultrasonic
characterization [9], and optical imaging [4,10] have been proposed.
Among them, optical imaging, which usually includes a CMOS/CCD
camera, a light source, a zoom lens and a visualization scaffold, has
been mostly used in the visualization system because it is theoretically
reliable and economical.
To date, the researches on optical visualization system for
extrusion foaming process could be basically classified into three
categories: 1. visualization of batch foaming based process to
simulate extrusion foaming; 2. visualizing extrudates at the die
exit; 3. visualization through transparent extrusion channel. Batch