Plastics, Rubber and Composites

Volume 39 (2010), 10 issues per year 

   This journal publishes open access papers.
   For further information click here.


To submit your paper online please click here

Contact the journal office

Plastics, Rubber and Composites: Macromolecular Engineering provides an international forum for the publication of original, peer reviewed research on the macromolecular engineering of polymeric and related materials and polymer matrix composites. Modern polymer processing is increasingly focused on macromolecular engineering: the manipulation of structure at the molecular scale to control properties and fitness for purpose of the final component. Intimately linked to this are the objectives of predicting properties in the context of an optimized design and of establishing robust processing routes and process control systems allowing the desired properties to be achieved reliably.

The main areas of interest are:

0. processing of single and multiphase polymeric systems (i.e. the organization of molecules to form a product with desired features), in quantified, controlled, or novel ways, across the length scales (nano/meso/macroscale); novel processing technologies; rheology; process measurement, sensors, and control; formation of polymers by novel routes; recycling; choice and incorporation of additives 
0. properties of these materials (mechanical, physical, chemical); tailoring of properties during processing; property-processing relationships; characterization of products, across the length scales; 
0. modelling of processing and structure development (melt/solid/multiphase): numerical and analytical modelling; constitutive relationships; validation 
0. measurement techniques for process control and materials characterization 
0. design methodologies, including knowledge based engineering design, and performance of end products. 

The journal's coverage will reflect growing common ground between the processing of polymers and of related materials in the fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and biomaterials sectors.

Plastics, Rubber and Composites publishes special issue on manufacturing and design of composites.
Find out more here.

Special issue on time dependent behaviour of rubber
Published in October, the special issue of PRC is formed from peer-reviewed papers based on selected presentations at a one day conference organised by the Rubber in Engineering Group (RIEG) of The Polymer Society of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. ‘Time dependent behaviour of rubber’ was held at the IOM3 London headquarters on 30 October 2008, chaired by Dr Martin Burke of QinetiQ, who is also a member of the RIEG committee. The central themes of the conference, reflected in the special issue, were concerned with measuring and predicting long term properties of rubber such as creep and stress relaxation, characterising the dynamic mechanical properties, understanding high frequency behaviour encountered in acoustic or ballistic situations and predicting the dynamic behaviour of real vibration damping systems. Understanding of this time dependent behaviour of rubber is critical in application in areas such as sound and vibration isolation. The REIG special issue features, amongst others, papers on a new class of rubber materials, magnetoelastomers, whose dynamic properties can be altered by the application of a magnetic field; methods used to predict long term dynamic behaviour; the use of finite element models to model second order formation behaviour. The Rubber Foundation Lecture for 2008, ‘Vagaries of elastomer service life predictions’, presented at the end of the conference by Dr Mike Roland from the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, is also included in the issue.