Development of innovative polymer nanocomposite foams

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With ever-increasing demands being made on the world's limited energy resources, the automotive and construction industries urgently need to develop new value-added light-weight products with significantly improved mechanical and insulation properties. In this context, this project aims to utilize the polymer nanocomposites and foaming technologies to achieve the goal of improving the properties and/or reducing the weight of the products for the automotive and construction industries. Lightweight automotive parts will be studied in collaboration with Ford Canada, a global leader in automotive manufacturing. Lightweight automotive products will reduce vehicle weight and increase fuel efficiency. On the other hand, insulation products for construction industry will be developed in collaboration with SABIC Innovative Plastics Canada and Sealed Air Canada, who are also international leaders in plastic materials and insulation products. Since space heating/cooling typically accounts for approximately 40% of the total residential and commercial energy consumed, significant energy savings will be realized by improving the thermal insulation efficiency of thermal insulation products. In this project, we will thoroughly investigate the materials compositions, the melt compounding techniques, and the processing conditions, required to develop nanocomposites having uniformly dispersed nano-sized domains. Subsequently, extensive foaming studies will be conducted to produce polymer nanocomposite foams in lab-scale foam extrusion and foam injection-molding equipment. Following this, scaled-up experiments will also be conducted with pilot-scale plastic foaming equipment, which is available at the Centre for Industrial Applications of Microcellular Plastics (CIAMP). The successful completion of this project will enable our industry partners to manufacture advanced nanocomposite products, especially lightweight automotive parts and construction materials, with superior mechanical properties in a cost-effective manner.