Compatibilization of polyethylene (waste) mixtures through reactive extrusion

The production of plastic materials has experienced incredible growth over the past decades. Polyethylene constitutes the largest part (25%) of plastic production, finding its application mostly as film in industrial and food packaging and agricultural use. However, since packaging materials are getting increasingly complex, polyethylene waste...

Effect of diisocyanate mixtures on the healing of thermoplastic polyurethanes

Self-healing materials and, in particular, polymers are characterized by their ability to partially or fully restore their original properties or functions after damage. Amongst the healable polymer classes, thermoplastic polyurethanes have received increasing attention in the last years. This is mainly due to their broad application areas, the...

Voxel-based additive manufacturing of biomimetic multiscale anisotropic materials

Polymer composites are found to have high performance efficiency because of its highly flexible polymer matrix and stiff fibres or functional fillers. The matrix and the reinforcements are two main components for a strong and tough composite. The performance of these composites highly depend on the material property of the matrix and the...

Space Charge analysis of epoxy based nanocomposites

This project investigates the effect of addition of h-BN (hexagonal boron nitride) nano-particles, of size about 70 nm, to epoxy resin, cast in the form of thin circular plaques, varying in thickness from 0.46 mm minimally till 0.56 mm maximally. Different filler concentrations by volume% have been chosen, with the lowest as 0.2 volume% till the...

The Structural Feasibility of 3D-printing houses using printable polymers

At this point in time, 3D-printing techniques in general, but especially applied for the building industry, still are in a phase of early experiments. One of the experimental attempts is to print a full-scale, three-story high, house in Amsterdam, using an up scaled version of a FDM-printer that is able to print blocks of 1.8 x 1.8 x 3.0 meters...

Analysis of Polymer Injectivity in Porous Media: Experiments and Modelling

A considerable portion of world’s reserves are located in mature and viscous oil reservoirs having thickness less than 15 m. Polymer flooding is a mature technology and still is the most important EOR method based on full field case histories. Accurate assessment of injectibility of viscous polymer solutions into these reservoirs without induced...

Random Polymers: Interaction with a Penetrable Surface

We introduce a polymer measure to describe a polymer that is attracted to the origin and repelled by the negative half-plane. We work out a direct expression for the partition function and look at properties of the free energy. We look at the model when repellance becomes attraction and when the repellance occurs in a random fashion. We prove...