Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lectureship Award 2018

Lecturer 2018:

Professor Behnam Pourdeyhimi
Nonwovens Institute of North Carolina State University

Bio

Dr. Pourdeyhimi Holds a PhD from the University of Leeds, UK. He is The “William A. Klopman” Distinguished Professor of Materials in the College of Textiles at North Carolina State University. He is also a Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State. He is currently serving as the Associate Dean for Industry, Research and Extension in the College of Textiles and is also the Executive Founding Director of the Nonwovens Institute. Prior to joining NC State, he was a professor at the School of Textiles and Fiber Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, he served for eleven years on the faculty in Textiles; and Materials & Nuclear Engineering at the University of Maryland. He spent two years at Cornell as a research scientist studying biomaterials. He is the recipient of the 1994-1995 Distinguished Achievement Award by the Fiber Society, The 2007 TAPPI Technical Achievement and Hollingsworth award and the 2008 INDA Lifetime Technical Achievement Award and most importantly, he is the recipient of the O. Max Gardner award, the highest award given by the UNC system in 2015. Dr. Pourdeyhimi’s research interests are in the area of nonwovens, responsive fibrous systems, filtration, computational modeling, materials, failure mechanisms, software algorithms, optics and image analysis. He has published widely (over 250 publications and over 300 presentations), and holds more than 80 patents (US and international filings). The Nonwovens Institute (NWI) is the world’s first accredited academic program for the interdisciplinary field of engineered fabrics. Based at the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, the NWI is an innovative global partnership between industry, government and academe. Operating on an “Open Innovation” platform, the Nonwovens Institute engages experts from industry and higher education in building next-generation nonwoven applications while also providing training and guidance to the field’s future leaders.

Title of the lecture: Nonwovens: The unknown Porous Media

The nonwovens industry evolved organically to create an ecosystem to deal with the global challenges for improved safety for healthcare workers and patients in the 1940’s and 50’s… the industry has evolved into a thriving, innovative engine that provides engineered solutions for many industrial segments such as medical, hygiene, filtration, wipes, automotive and geosynthetics. Nonwoven structures are porous media that are very different from what we know as porous structures. Fibers within the structure form capillary networks and while the structure behaves as a porous medium, it has very unique and specific attributes not found in other porous media. Nonwovens can have porous structures that range from the nanoscale to millimeter scale or even larger. Nonwovens are produced by a variety of methods to form structures that deliver the necessary functions in large volumes and using automated processes. This presentation will outline how we define and quantify these structures, and will discuss structure-property relationships of this unique porous media and the recent developments and in particular developments where fibers in the range of 50 nm to 1 micron are creating nano-porous game changers in applications such as filtration and healthcare.