Key Concepts in Blend Morphology Development by Chaotic Advection: Experiments and Modeling

The application of chaotic advection to polymer blends and composites originated in the corresponding author’s laboratory in 1991. Research has resulted in smart blending devices now being adopted by industry. In the accompanying talk, key concepts and recent results are described where polymer melt components are more controllably formed in situ into a wide variety of blend morphologies and where solid additives are more deliberately organized into functional arrangements. A desired blend morphology or arrangement can be specified to smart blending devices via a computer interface and extruded to give improved and new plastic products. Chaotic advection is an enabling recent sub-field of fluid mechanics for smart blending. Recent advances in fluid mechanics have thereby been implemented to reconsider how blending is done and render in situ structure development more controllable and predictable. By organizing melts and progressively refining them, methods are also amenable to predictive modeling.