TUTORIAL SESSIONS

Purpose & Review

This tutorial will provide practical information that will help you enhance your technical capability in foaming. It will help you develop new blowing agents to meet the growing challenges, design foam products that meet customer’s needs, improve effectiveness of your foam R& and processing projects. The attendee will also receive updated key references on plastic foams.

When and Where

Tutorial starts at 8:00 AM Tuesday, September 11 and ends at 12:00 PM Wednesday, September 12, 2018. It will take place at

Hyatt Regency Montreal
1255 Jeanne-Mance
Montreal, QC H5B 1E5, CANADA
Map & Directions

Tutorial Outline

• Sept 11, 8:00-12:00 — Foaming processes — Prof. Chul B. Park
  1. Foam Structures
  2. Foaming Agents
  3. Fundamentals of Foaming (Cell Nucleation and Growth)
  4. Extrusion Foaming
  5. Foam Injection Molding
  6. Bead Foaming
• Sept 11, 13:00-17:00 — Sustainable and composite foams — Dr. Patrick C. Lee
  7. Biofoams: processing and properties
  8. Nanocomposite Foams: processing and properties
  9. Multifunctional Foams: Acoustic, Conductive, Functionally Graded and Aerogels
• Sept 12, 8:00-12:00 — Nanocellular foams — Dr. Stéphane Costeux
  10. Challenges to achieve very high cell density
  11. Materials and processes
  12. Properties of nanofoams

Note: lunch will be provided on both days for tutorial attendees. A tour of the Old Montreal including a Bateau-Mouche cruise will take place on Sept 12 afternoon

Who should attend?

This tutorial is intended for a range of companies and individuals involved in thermoplastic foam development, production, and applications: R&D scientists and engineers, formulation scientists, process engineers, quality engineers and application engineers from thermoplastic foam production and manufacturing companies. Chemists and chemical engineers involved in development of foaming grade resins and blowing agents. Foaming equipment manufacturing: design engineers, project engineers, and rheology specialists. Development engineers and research scientists working on new foam developments. Foam users and application specialists.

About the instructors

Prof. Chul B. Park received his PhD from MIT in 1993. He is Distinguished Professor of Microcellular Engineered Plastics at University of Toronto. He is the Founder and Director of the Microcellular Plastics Manufacturing Laboratory, which enjoys the reputation of being one of the pioneering research institutions in refining various foaming technologies. He has also established the Centre for Industrial Application of Microcellular Plastics with $10M pilot-scale and industry-scale equipment in refining various foaming technologies. He is an accomplished scientist with international recognition in the field of plastic foaming as the author or co-author of over 900 publications including 280 journal papers. He is also active in professional activities. He is Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Cellular Plastics and serves as an advisory editorial board member of a few journals. He has been organizing the Foam Symposiums at PPS. He also served on FOAMS TopCon 2006 and ANTEC TPM&F 2008 and 2009 as the Technical Program Chair. He was the Conference Chair for Biofoams 2009 & 2013 and PPS Americas Conference 2012.

Dr. Patrick C. Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at The University of Toronto. He received degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia (B.Sc.), and the University of Toronto (M.A.Sc. in 2001 and Ph.D. in 2006). After Postdoctoral studies at the University of Minnesota with Prof. Chris Macosko, Dr. Lee worked at The Dow Chemical Company from 2008 to 2014 as a Research Scientist and R&D Project Leader. He then joined the University of Vermont as Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, where he has led a research platform on the design and manufacture of lightweight and smart composite structures, before recently moving to U. Toronto in July 2018. Dr. Lee has authored over 100 journal & conference papers, 2 book chapters, and 13 filed or issued patent applications in the field of polymer foam processing and characterization, and processing-structure-property relationships of nano-composites. He is a recipient of several awards including a National Science Foundation Early Faculty Career Development Award (2018), the PPS Morand Lambla award (2018), the Hanwha Advanced Materials Non-Tenured Faculty Award in 2017 and 3 “best paper” awards from the Society of Plastics Engineers.

Dr. Stéphane Costeux is a R&D Fellow with The Dow Chemical Company. He joined Dow in 2002 and transferred to Dow Building & Construction business R&D in 2006. His current work relates to experimental and theoretical aspects in polymer science, rheology and materials processing, product and process development for building materials, incl. thermoplastic and thermoset insulation foams.
Prior to joining Dow, he earned an engineering degree from ESPCI-Paris, a Ph.D. from Univ. Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris, France), and was a Chem. Eng. post-doctoral fellow at McGill University (Montreal). He has authored 75 publications (incl. 27 patents applications). He is a Fellow of the Society of Plastic Engineers, and received the Best Paper award at the SPE FOAMS conference in 2010, 2012 and 2013. He currently serves as Chair of the New Technology Forum committee of ANTEC, as a Director on the board of the SPE Thermoplastic Materials & Foams division, and on the Editorial board of J. Cellular Plastics.