Professor Ivana K Partridge
Professor of Polymer Composites, Head of Composites Centre
Location: Building 61, Cranfield campus
E: i.partridge@cranfield.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1234 754153
Manufacturing and Materials
Current activities
Professor Ivana K Partridge is active in research in the field of highly specialised thermosetting resins and their composites, spanning the range from nanocomposites to aerospace composite structures. Her postgraduate teaching mirrors the research activity. Examples of recent and on-going research projects are ‘Conductive adhesive films and gel-coats’, ‘Cure modelling and monitoring in multiphase thermosetting systems’, ‘Industrial applications of cure monitoring in composite structures’, ‘Manufacturing approaches to incorporation of carbon nanotubes in structural composites’ and ‘Delamination suppression in composites by through-the-thickness reinforcement techniques, namely Z-pinning and Tufting’.
Expertise in processing and performance of multiphase polymers and composites is now being extended into multicomponent engineering material systems by collaboration with colleagues from the more ‘metallic’ side of the materials spectrum.
Clients
- EPSRC
- EU Framework 7
- BAE SYSTEMS
- Airbus
- EADS Innovations
- Scott Bader Co Ltd
- Rolls-Royce
- Albany Engineered Composites
- INASCO Hellas Inc.
Background
Professor Ivana K Partridge read Natural Sciences (Experimental Physics) at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1972-75. After a few years of industrial research in the area of Biophysics, she joined Cranfield University in 1979 as a Research Officer in the Materials Department. She obtained her PhD in 1984 for studies into the ‘Effects of phase separation in cross-linked resins containing polymeric modifiers’ and worked for a number of years on a range of toughened polymers, before concentrating on the processing and properties of polymer matrix continuous fibre reinforced composites.
She is author/co-author of over 90 peer-reviewed publications, six book chapters, several review articles, a technology video and editor of “Advanced Composites” (Elsevier 1989). She was the UK representative on VAMAS Technical Working Party TWA4 on Multiphase Polymers between 1985 and 1992, becoming its International Chair for 1992-1995. Other relevant memberships are: EPSRC Peer Review College, the International Exchanges Committee of the Royal Society, the editorial board of ‘Polymers & Polymer Composites’ journal and the Technical Review panel of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She is member of the Executive Board of the British Composites Society and was a member of the Executive Planning Committee of the highly successful ICCM-17 conference in 2009.
