Polymeric Thermosetting Compounds : Innovative Aspects of Their Formulation Technology

Engineering design teams sometimes have need of a material that may not exist because the combination of required properties is difficult to achieve. One solution is to develop a new material having the required set of properties needed in the application. During the author's 40-year career he has successfully worked on many such problems. The uniquely useful and valuable book, Polymeric Thermosetting Compounds: Innovative Aspects of Their Formulation Technology, presents twenty of those design problems and the solutions, which resulted in patents and spin-off applications.

Author Ralph Hermansen, with years of experience of hands-on experience, is an expert in formulating epoxies, polyurethanes, and other polymers into compounds that have unique properties, and here he shares his knowledge and experience of attaining novel solutions to very challenging problems. He covers polymeric compounds such as coatings, adhesives, encapsulants, transparent plastics, and others.

Chapters describe the design problem and define which key properties are sought in the new material. The author shares his thinking about how to approach the formulating problem and describes the experimental procedures used to eventually solve the problem. Patent information is shared as well. Once a new family of polymeric compounds is developed, that technology can be used to attack new unsolved materials problems, or "spin-offs," and real-life examples are provided to help readers see new applications of the technologies described in the earlier chapters.

The book will be of interest to a diverse group of people. Industry professionals already in the business of selling specialty compounds may be able to add new products to their catalogs with little research cost or time by using the information in the book. Formulators, trying to develop a new compound to challenging requirements, may gain insight into how to make a breakthrough. The information in the book will be very valuable to companies needing these novel solutions. And younger people wondering what a career in materials science would be like get a first-hand commentary from someone who has done it.

Ralph D. Hermansen was formerly Senior Scientist at Hughes Aircraft Company in El Segundo, California. He was very active in the Society for the Advancement of Materials and Processes Engineering (SAMPE) and has presented papers annually and attended many seminars and sessions. He has 21 patent awards and won best inventor award in 1991 from Hughes Aircraft Company. He has taught courses at HAC as an instructor in their Advanced Technical Education Program (ATEP) for several years materials engineering and Pascal Programming Language and is the author of Formulating Plastics and Elastomers by Computer (Elsevier). Mr. Hermansen was known nationwide as one to see with challenging material problems. Anxious clients, from as far across the continent, traveled to seek his help with "unsolvable problems." He currently reviews books in his field.