Abstract: A wet and air-permeable fibrous web, such as a cellulosic sheet coming from a paper mill, is dried by being led around a rotating drum with peripheral interstices centered on a perforated suction tube. The latter opens into a low-pressure chamber inside a stationary sectorial shield which has a wall, facing against the direction of drum rotation, provided with one or more apertures for the moisture-laden air to be exhausted. The peripheral interstices are formed by strips lying between a pair of axially spaced end rings, these strips intersecting a plane transverse to the axis of rotation along lines whose distance from that axis increases progressively in the direction of rotation whereby air drawn through the web by suction is also mechanically accelerated, against the centrifugal force, toward the center of the drum.