Development of new formulations for Mercoplasa products, working together with the Raw Material, Quality, and Production sectors to control raw material' quality and products, as well as evaluate the production and its main problems.Main responsibilities:- Quality inspection of products- Analysis of production defects and their relationship with the type of raw material and mold used- Generation, validation and registration of Technical Product and Process Sheets (TPSs)- Payback analysis of pigments and additives- Testing and evaluation of new suppliers of raw materials and additives- Reporting raw material input / consumption - Development of new polyolefin blends and production validationMain deliveries:- TPSs development and implementation- Proposition of the future laboratory structure for checking and quality control of raw material- Co-participation in the implementation of quality control in the company- Development of a simulator to determine the melt flow rate of polyolefin blends- Development of a simulator for assessing the payback of additives and pigments

Project: Structure-properties-processing relationship of compatible PLA/TPE blendsMain results/responsibilities:• Development of a PLA blend with mechanical performance similar to the HDPE and PP injection grades.• Development of relationship between interfacial properties – rheological behavior – fracture morphology – mechanical behavior of PLA /TPE blends.• Operation/student training to use internal chamber mixer, mini-injector, and goniometer to prepare and characterize PLA and PLA blends.• Seminar presentation about the relationship between interface properties–rheology and interface properties–mechanical behavior of PLA blends.• Research results presentation at national congresses.• Publication of 2 articles in international journals.

Project: Evaluation of polymeric coupling agent in the thermal behavior of PP/GF compoundsMain results/responsibilities:• Relationship between crystallite growth rate – crystallization temperature for polypropylene/glass fiber reinforced polypropylene evaluated by ANOVA.• Evaluation of PP crystallization process based on the relationship isothermal/non-isothermal DSC – optical microscopy with a Hot Stage probe data.• Operation/training of students to operate optical microscope with Hot Stage probe and characterization of polymer crystallization.• Seminar presentations about DSC isothermal crystallization kinetics – Crystallization kinetics evaluated by optical microscopy relationship for laboratory research group.• Publication of researches findings at national/international congresses.• Research results presentation at national congresses.

Main results/responsibilities:• Assistance in the development of polyolefin surface properties evaluation methodology.• Updating researcher team with recent articles related to the project objectives.• Search and analysis of patents and papers for polyethylene and polypropylene projects.• Characterization of different polymers by mechanical (flexural, impact, and tensile), morphological (SEM), thermal (DSC and TGA), and spectroscopic (FTIR) techniques and generation of technical reports.