Polymer Engineering Center co-directors Tim Osswald (top) and Lih-Sheng “Tom” Turng (left) and Rheology Research Center Director Jeff Giacomin purchased a new two-color, co-injection molding machine used in research for the state's plastics industry. (Photo: Renee Meiller) (26K JPG)

When SIMTEC Silicone Parts, a start-up company that makes customized liquid silicone parts, began looking for a city to locate their headquarters, Madison immediately came to mind.

The main reason - it's home to the College of Engineering's Polymer Engineering Center (PEC), a leader in research and technology transfer for companies like SIMTEC Silicone that use polymer products.

For Mechanical Engineering Professor Tim Osswald, SIMTEC Silicone's decision to locate in Madison was a clear endorsement of the polymer center's reputation among cutting-edge industries.

SIMTEC Silicone's products, aimed at the automobile, health care and electronic industries, involve the use of injection-molded liquid silicone. The liquid silicone industry is strong in Europe, but largely undeveloped in the United States and the Western Hemisphere, Osswald said.

"It's a new technology that very few companies are using here," he said. "There is a huge market in the United States and the Americas. SIMTEC Silicone knew they'd need our resources."

That kind of outreach by the Polymer Engineering Center has recently won it national recognition. The National Science Foundation last year named it as an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC). The NSF program seeks to recognize and foster partnerships between university researchers and industry, and more closely link technology transfer with emerging needs in the plastics and polymer industry.

Plastics and polymers are big in Wisconsin. The industry employs more than 52,000 people in the state, and has annual shipments of more than $8 billion, according to the Society of Plastics Industry. A recent statewide conference on Wisconsin's economy identified plastics as one of the six key industries the state should target for growth and support.

"This is an important industry for us to understand and help where we can with our research," said University of Wisconsin System President Katharine Lyall at an October seminar that formally kicked off the PEC's designation as an NSF research center.

In addition, more than a third of all plastic manufacturing activities in the country take place within a 500-mile radius of Wisconsin. That puts the PEC at the heart of the plastic industry's efforts to come up with new products and new methods of manufacturing them.

For the PEC, working with Wisconsin's plastics industry is nothing new. The center collaborates with companies such as Teel Plastics, Inc, in Baraboo, Placon Corp. in Fitchburg, Kaysun Corp. in Manitowoc, and the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison on product development and manufacturing.

At Kaysun, for example, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Lih-Sheng “Tom” Turng has been working with company researchers in utilizing polymer-silicate nanocomposites in products. Nanocomposites offer improved stiffness, greater heat resistance and flame retardation, and better stability, according to Turng. By combining nanocomposites with microcellular injection molding, Turng and Kaysun researchers have shown they can reduce the weight of products while at the same time enhancing their durability and resistance to cracking.

"We're attacking fundamental problems - something that can't be done in private industry because they don't have the research base or equipment," Turng said.

Contact: Polymer Engineering Center
608/215-4244