CV

Researcher in the Shoe Design and Development Centre of the Central Leather Research Institute of Chennai (India), Dr Gnanasundaram SARASWATHY has an extensive research track-record in the field of polyurethanes. She presented scientific papers in over 20 conferences and congresses worldwide and received many presentation awards. She filled-in several patent applications related to novel viscoelastic polyurethanes and insole sheets.

ABSTRACT

Currently, 17 billion pairs of shoes are produced worldwide every year. Apart from leather (8%), PVC (20%), Rubber (40%), TPR (14%), EVA (9%), and PU (8%) are being used as soling materials. The polymeric shoe soles create an enormous amount of waste that is currently being disposed as landfill. Though polyurethane is used only 8% of the global production of shoes and this figure continuous to rise for its unique mechanical properties. Therefore it is important to develop biodegradable PU soling materials and adopt eco-friendly practices. Rigid biodegradable polyester based polyurethanes (PU) were synthesized by reacting aliphatic or aromatic diisocyanate (NCO) with poly (ε-caprolactone) (PCL) to obtain prepolymer which were then reacted with chain extenders (CE) (Diol or Diamine) in stoichiometric ratio of 2:1:1. In order to reduce the cost of the materials nanoparticles were added as fillers. The biodegradability of prepared PU was studied by soil burial method and the suitability for application as footwear soling material was confirmed by characterization of materials for the physico-mechanical properties such as hardness, density, tensile and tear strength, elongation, resistance to abrasion. The physico-mechanical properties of PU composites were found to meet the standard specifications for soling materials. The PU composites developed with 2% of nanoclay and titanium dioxide nanoparticles had shown better properties than the other PU sheets. PU had shown maximum of 7.9 % weight loss after 60 days of burial in normal garden soil. This study is being continued to develop soles using biodegradable PU composite by injection moulding

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