Santhosh Sridhar

Controlling The Skin Thickness in Microcellular Foams Using Foaming Temperature

Abstract: It has been known for a long time that a solid skin can be produced on the microcellular foams in the solid-state process. The thickness of the skin can be controlled by varying the gas desorption time prior to foaming. Thus, to create a thicker skin a larger desorption time is needed.

In this paper, we show that the foaming temperature can also be employed to independently vary the skin thickness. We found that increasing foaming temperature leads to decrease in skin thickness for the given saturation condition and desorption time. Experimental results are presented on the PC-CO2 system. A theoretical model is developed to explain the effect of foaming temperature on skin thickness.

Biography: Santhosh Sridhar is a Ph.D. student in Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Washington, Seattle. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India. He is doing research at Microcellular Plastics Lab in UW under the guidance of his Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Vipin Kumar.