Welcome to exiciting world of polymer processing!

Welcome to MIT's Polymer Processing Research Lab.

Our research efforts are directed toward building a fundamental understanding of structure development during polymer processing primarily in multiphase systems such as blends, composites, and impact additives. The performance of articles manufactured from such formulations is critically dependent on the structure generated during the processing operation. Analysis of these operations requires understanding of fluid mechanics, heat transfer, mass transfer, mixing, rheology, polymer physics, and polymer chemistry.

Our approach is focused on:

determination of critical process mechanisms in complex systems and
mathematical modeling of these critical processes.

Current research activities include investigation of polymer mixing and compounding operations. Experiments probe the developement of morphology and structure during the compounding process. Key aspects of the process are modeled. Particluar emphasis is placed on analysis of processing in the melting or softening regime, which is critical to phase size reduction during mixing operations.

Please take a look at the details of our work under the "Research" section.