Polymer Melt Fracture (PDF)

Rudy Koopmans received his PhD in physical and macromolecular chemistry from the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He is a fellow in the Basic Plastics R&D organization of The Dow Chemical Company located in Horgen, Switzerland. Since joining Dow in 1983, he has held various R&D positions in Europe and the United States. His main R&D focus is on materials development, polymer processing, and developing innovative technology solutions to market needs and identified market trends. In addition, he holds a visiting professorship at Leeds University in the United Kingdom in the Department of Chemical Engineering. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and books, and is a holder of multiple patents.

Jaap den Doelder received his MSc in applied physics and applied mathematics at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He received his PhD in applied mathematics at the same university in 1999 on the topic of polymer melt fracture. The same year, he joined The Dow Chemical Company in Terneuzen, the Netherlands. He has since worked on a variety of topics related to materials science and modeling of polymers, connecting application requirements to molecular design. He is currently a research scientist in Dow's polyethylene business.

Jaap Molenaar studied mathematics and theoretical physics at Leiden University in the Netherlands and wrote a PhD thesis on the field of solid state physics. For more than a decade he was involved in mathematics consulting. He received the Neways Award for his work on academic knowledge transfer to industry. He specializes in the modeling of dynamical systems in terms of differential equations and has published several books on these topics. His research focuses on fluid mechanics, in particular polymer melt flow. Recently, he became active in systems biology. He is a full professor in applied mathematics and the hea