Welcome to the News Page for the Polymer Institute. On this page we will try to keep you posted on what is currently happening at the Polymer Institute.
1996 saw the completion of several theses and the graduation of 3 students from the Polymer Institute.
- Summit Khanna graduated early in 1996 after presenting his work on the effect of orientation on PET.
- Thermal crystallization and heat setting of PET was the area of research for Pankaj Varma.
- Anitha Kosanam finished up this past summer. Her research was in the area of blends of HDPE and PET
By the time you read this, another student, Tom O'Connell, will probably have defended his thesis and be very close to graduation. Tom's area of specialization is in permeation of gasoline components through multilayer structures.
On September 11, 1996 the Institute held another semi-annual meeting of the PET Industrial Consortium. The morning session offered an opportunity for students and some faculty to present the results of ongoing research projects. Discussion of possible new projects and other consortium issues continued in the afternoon session. More than 20 people from eight different companies attended.
Several of the instruments at the Polymer Institute have been modernized by the addition of data acquisition hardware.
- One of our Instron Universal Testers was upgraded early this year with new electronics and a PC-based data acquisition and analysis system. This system is used extensively for measurement of mechanical properties such as modulus and strength of plastic samples.
- The Long Extensional Tester (LET) is used to biaxially stretch plastic sheet samples and measure stress versus strain. Stretching temperature of the samples plus the strain rates in both stretch directions can all be individually controlled. A PC was added to the system for both control of the instrument and for recording the experimental data. This improvement to the LET is expected to be completed soon.
- Plastic items under load will often continue to deform with time. The understanding of this process, termed creep, is important in the proper design and analysis of articles made from plastics. We utilize a custom creep apparatus which can test up to 10 samples at a time. Sample measurements are often made over a time period of days and samples can fail at inopportune times. Modernization of this apparatus with computer data acquisition will ease the task of data collection and improv e the analysis of materials.