Polymers, Plastics, Rheology and Processing

This web site is about a range of  subjects on  Polymers, Plastics, Rheology and Processing and covers a research period from the 1970s to 2020.  A significant amount of the work is visual and for example the movie clips on this page show in one case, stress fields in flowing molten polyethylene plastic and  the second movie shows how water filaments break up when subject to very high stretching extensional strain rates. The site hopefully will prove useful to  people who want relatively simple and often visual explanations about a range of scientific and engineering topics. 

There are specific sections on;

  Polymers,   Rheology,   Fluid Mechanics,   Innovative Processing,   Scientific ApparatusThe Sustainability of Plastics.  Something to Say” and Publications.

You will find short introductions to each of the headline topics followed by a selection of  presentations that describe different aspects of the various scientific and  technological fields. There are also  my Cambridge University lecture notes on both;  

Rheology and Polymers

 Work on filament breakup carried out in conjunction with CEMEF at Sophia Antipolis, France in the 2000s, can be found at; 

Ink jet and filament stretch

Science, Engineering and innovation all have visual and creative parts and  some  aspects are covered in“Something to say”. The section includes short articles such as  how scientists and engineers can be thought of as creative people in addition to a range of topics that  could be classified as opinions rather than scientific facts. There is  a cluster of very visual Movie clips  ,again most of the movies involve flow describing various processes and experiments.  I have also added a 2000s  section on plastics use and reuse;

The Sustainability of Plastics.

Stretching Rheology and Symmetry to the limits!

   Covid-19  resulted in a 2020 Institute for Non Newtonian Fluid Mechanics (INNFM) Port Merrion (Wales) meeting to be cancelled and so below I include the contribution that I would have given. The talk is a story that links my connections with Wales and highlights two areas of research one carried out in the 1970s and the other in the 2010s. There are notes for each slide

Port merrion 2020 with notes 2

Innovative Processing

Process and Product Innovation was an important part of our work and you will find sections on several separate inventions.

High Modulus Polyethylene

Oscillatory Flow Mixing

Flexible chocolate

Plastic Microcapillary Films

If you are looking for a scientific/technology story to read, why not try my fiction novel? The book was written in the 1990s with an epilogue added in the 2000s. I wonder if you can pick up how the world had changed between these dates, even after such a relatively short period of time?

High Tension-pdf 
