Abstract: Experimental determination of uniaxial elongational viscosity of polymer melts still raises a number of basic questions concerning an approach how to carry out the measurements. In contrast to a determination of shear viscosity this problem is much more complicated including the theoretical background of the whole experimental process. As a possible alternative to the classical devices of Meissner and Munstedt types for measurement of uniaxial elongational viscosity there has been recently proposed and tested so-called SER Universal Testing Platform (M.L.Sentmanat, US Patent No. 6578413) enabling its application in the traditional commercial rotational rheometers without any additional alteration of the host system. The aim is to demonstrate the invariantness of dimensions of the rectangular polymer samples used with respect to the obtained values of uniaxial elongational viscosity. This is based on summarization of the experimental results taken within the wide range of geometrical parameters generating the dimensions of the experimental polymer samples used (viz. their widths and thicknesses).

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Petr Filip graduated from the Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Czech Republic in 1976. He completed his Ph.D. study at the Institute of Mathematics, Acad. Sci. Czech Rep., his Ph.D. Thesis was devoted to oscillatory solutions of partial differential equations. Since 1980 he has been with the Institute of Hydrodynamics, Acad. Sci. Czech Rep., Prague, for many years as a head of the Department of Chemical Engineering where he was interested in fluid mechanics, especially theory of jets and mixing. Later on he was appointed to the position of a scientific secretary (up to now), at present his sphere of interest is rheology (flow of non-Newtonian liquids). He is an author (co-author) of more than 100 contributions published in international journals and conference proceedings.