“Design of polymer products and shaping processes benefit from a change from experimental trial-and-error to true quantitative predictive capability.”

Patrick Anderson is Dean of the Department Mechanical Engineering and full professor in structure and rheology of complex fluids and chair of the processing and performance group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His present interests include structure development during flow, interfacial phenomena, additive manufacturing, and polymer processing. Teaching is focused on polymer processing, interfacial transport phenomena in engineering flows and computational continuum mechanics. The main research objective is to provide knowledge and models for the prediction and understanding of structure development during processing and the resulting final properties of polymeric products. These properties are determined by intrinsic (molecular) material parameters and, to a great extent, by the processing conditions.

Key topics are the development of computational methods to analyze flows where interfaces play a crucial role. The interfaces can be passive line in distributive mixing in both static and dynamic mixers. The mapping method has proven to be powerful in optimization of mixing processes, and is finding new applications in the field of microfluidics. For active interfaces, where interfacial tension and/or interfacial rheology is essential, novel methods are developed that couple bulk and interfacial behavior. The complex process of viscous drop coalescence over the complete range of length scales (about five orders) is tackled, hut also the effect of surfactants on drop deformation and breakup in shear flow has also been unraveled. Research also extends to development and application of diffuse-interface models to predict the morphology and rheology of polymer blends. This type of modelling is applied to describe polymer phase separation in complex flow.

Patrick Anderson studied Applied Mathematics at TU/e where he received his PhD from the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1999. His PhD work was on distributive mixing of polymer melts and solutions using combined computational and theoretical methods. Following a one-year break working for Océ Technologies on hot-melt inkjet printing he joined the Polymer Technology group. Patrick is on the Editorial Board of the International Scientific Committee of European Symposium of Polymer Blends. He is also a member of the Editorial Board and International Advisory Board of Macromolecular Materials Engineering and Chairman of the Dutch Society of Rheology. Patrick has been guest editor for Macromolecular Materials and Engineering. In addition, he served from 2015-2018 as a member-at-large for the Society of Rheology. During the last 12 years he had appointed visiting professorship at UCSB, Stanford and ETHZ.

September 2024 he published the following interactive textbook connected to the first-year Bachelor course Introduction Mechanical Engineering:

P.D. Anderson, Introduction Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, 2024, https://doi.org/10.6100/74d1-fv57.

• American Society of Physics
• American Society of Mechanical Engineers
• Polymer Processing Society
• Dutch Society of Rheology (Chairman)
• RPK Rheology and Processing (Senior lecturer / lecturer)
• Research school Eindhoven Polymer Laboratories (Scientific Director)
• European Society of Rheology (Dutch representative)

Partners in (semi-)industry

Akzo, BASF, Bayer Technology Services, DSM, Exxonmobil , Fromagerie Bel, Oce ́ Technologies, Philips, Proctor and Gamble, RCCM, SABIC, Total, Teijing Twaron, Unilever