Machine Learning Guided Development of Tailored Polyolefin Molecular Structures for Lightweighting Applications

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Across various industries that are major consumers of polyolefin resins, lightweight solutions are highly sought after to replace existing materials in an effort to reduce material and energy consumption within the packaging, construction, and automotive industries. Polymer foaming represents an extremely valuable technique for the production of lightweight materials, and while it is actively employed in many industries, the development of scaled-up foaming processes and foamable polymer resins is a highly intensive and arduous process. Recent progress by our group has demonstrated that a class of high melt strength (HMS) polyolefin resins show promising properties for producing superior lightweight foams across a wide processing window, an aspect that makes them particularly interesting for large scale manufacturing processes. The proposed project aims to employ machine learning (ML) techniques in the study of resin structure-foam property relationships as a tool to accelerate the materials development process and deepen our fundamental understanding. This proposal outlines a systematic plan for the development of polyolefin resins with tailored molecular structures that are optimized for creating lightweight foams with broad processing windows. The comprehensive understanding of the structure-property relationships developed through ML-assisted analysis and modeling will be used to inform and guide the upstream synthesis of resins with tailored molecular structures. This study will proceed following two primary objectives: 1) screening and analysis of HMS resins to develop structure-property relationships for small-scale foaming processes; (2) extension of this knowledge to the development of polyolefin resins tailored for Foam Injection Moulding (FIM) processes.This project is beneficial to Canadian plastics product manufacturing, which is a $27.7 billion industry. This research project will simultaneously help Canadian manufacturers to grow in a highly competitive market with new technologies. The project will also facilitate the training of multiple highly qualified personnel with industry-relevant expertise, and the creation of new jobs in the manufacturing sector of Ontario.