Nordic Rheology Conference
Gothenburg, August 21-23, 2019

The conference covered all aspects and areas of rheology. Industrial case studies and academic research papers were presented.

The NRC2019 highlighted the rheology of cellulose systems relating to the use in polymer composites, coatings, paper, pulp, pharmaceuticals, food, etc. The pulp and paper industry is important in the Nordic countries and special attention was therefore given to this field. Other subjects of special interest for NRC2019 included food, polymeric materials and bio-applications.

The NRC was held at the Chalmers Conference Centre in Gothenburg where also the AERC 2010 was held.

Gareth McKinley is an authority in rheology, from Mechanical Engineering at MIT. His research includes extensional rheometry, microfluidic rheometry and non-Newtonian fluid dynamics.

Paula Moldenaers from the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven is familiar to most rheologists in Europe. She has studied the morphology of complex fluids such as immiscible blends, liquid crystals, filled systems as well as gels, and she is a leading rheologist in the polymer area.

Alain Dufresne is well-known in the area of nano-cellulose and one of the most cited researchers in materials science. He has published a large amount of papers in the field of processing and characterization of renewable nanocomposites.

Daniel Söderberg is Director at Treesearch , the research platform for forestry based materials and chemicals. He has previously worked with paper and pulp research at Innventia (current RISE Bioeconomy) and fluid mechanics at KTH in Stockholm where he was head of the Department for Mechanics.

Gold Sponsors

BillerudKorsnäs
Chalmers University of Technology
RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
The Research Council Formas
Gothenburg City

Silver Sponsors

Tetra Pak

Bronze Sponsors

TA Instruments
Lantmännen
Anton Paar
Rheo Filament
Coloplast

The program included a mixture of plenary lectures by internationally renowned invited lecturers and contributions from NRC delegates. There were also a poster presentation, an industrial workshop and an exhibition by leading industrial partners.

Conference Program

List of Posters

For the Conference logo, click the links below:
Horisontal version
Vertical version

During the Conference industrial rheologists met and exchanged experiences. There were both presentations on non-competitive cases and discussions on measuring techniques, methods and practices. The workshop was led by Fredrik Innings from Tetra Pak and Gustaf Mårtensson from Mycronic .

The workshop was especially focus on how to use commercial CFD tools simulating complex fluids to solve industrial problems.

A rheology course was given on Wednesday morning, August 21 before the conference started. It introduced the basics of rheology and facilitated the understanding of more complicated topics discussed during the conference.

The course was given by the invited speakers who presented the following topics

• Introduction to rheology and linear viscoelasticity , Gareth McKinley
• Nanocellulose: rheology and applications , Alain Dufresne
• Polymer Rheology , Paula Moldenaers

Wednesday August 21

• Reception on Wednesday
Gothenburg City hosted the reception at Chalmers Conference Centre where the Mayor welcomed all to Gothenburg.

Thursday August 22

• Conference dinner in the evening at Chalmerska huset.

Landvetter Airport is located 20 minutes from the city centre and has direct flights to a number of cities in Europe, see Landvetter Airport web site.

There are high-speed trains to Stockholm (3h, Arlanda Airport), Copenhagen Airport 3h and a fast bus service to Oslo 3.5h (Gardemon Airport). You can also arrive to Gothenburg by ferry from Fredrikshavn in Denmark and from Kiel in Germany.

Landvetter Airport to Gothenburg city centre and to Chalmers Conference Centre
After you exit customs follow signs for "Buss" and you will find the Airport Bus just outside of the airport building. After SEK 95 and a 20 min ride you arrive to the city centre. You can buy a discounted ticket for the Airport bus in advance using an app on your smartphone (app on App Store and on Google Play). Ask the driver for a tram/bus ticket if you plan to continue your travel.
For Chalmers Conference Centre, exit the bus at ”Korsvägen” and take tram 6, 8 or 13 from Platform F one stop to ”Chalmers”. Please see the video on YouTube for more detailed instructions.
For Quality Hotel Panorama, exit the bus at "Korsvägen" and walk 15 minutes or take bus 52 to "Utlandagatan".
For Scandic Hotel Rubinen, exit the bus at "Berzeliigatan" and walk 5 minutes to the hotel.

You can also take a taxi from Landvetter Airport to the city centre for about SEK 400.

Central Train Station to Chalmers Conference Centre
If you arrive by train exit to "Drottningtorget" and take a tram to Chalmers Conference Centre (tram stop "Chalmers"). The fastest line is tram 13 from Platform B towards "Sahlgrenska", but you can also take tram 7 from Platform C towards "Tynnered".

Göteborg municipal transport system 
Göteborg offers an extensive municipal transport system with trams, busses, commuter trains and ferries. Central Göteborg is considered one zone where a unit charge applies for travel. This zone is large and covers well the needs for conference travel.
You can buy a cash ticket/one-way ticket at the Pressbyrån shops and 7-Eleven. An easier way to buy tickets is to use the app ToGo. If you would like to travel more, it is better to buy a period ticket. You will then be able to travel where you want and how much you want for a 24h or 72h period. Read more on the Västtrafik web site.

Hotels to Conference Centre
Scandic Hotel Rubinen to Chalmers Conference Centre: You can walk in 20 minutes from the hotel to Chalmers Conference Centre following the map below. For municipal transport you take tram 7 or 10 (4 minutes) from the nearby tram stop” Valand” to “Chalmers”.

Quality Hotel Panorama to Chalmers Conference Centre: You can walk in 15 minutes from the hotel to Chalmers Conference Centre following the map below. For municipal transport you take bus 52 from “Utlandagatan” part of the way and walk the rest, or bus 52 in the other direction to “Korsvägen” where you catch tram 6, 8 or 13 (3 minutes) to “Chalmers”.

If you want to walk from the hotels to the conference venue a guide from the organising committee will be present at the respective registration desk at Rubinen and Panorama at 8 am on Thursday August 22.

Map of the NRC venues

The NRC 2019 was organized by Chalmers University of Technology (Roland Kádár and Mikael Rigdahl) together with RISE Research Institutes of Sweden (Mats Stading). The organising committee also included Jessica Twedmark, Patricia Lopez Sanchez, Anna Ström, Carina Schultz and Agne Swerin.

The 28th Nordic Rheology Conference was held August 21-23, 2019, at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. The official organizer of the meeting was the Nordic Rheology Society (NRS). The actual organization of the meeting was excellently executed by the Organizing Committee, chaired by Roland Kádár (Chalmers university of Technology) and Mats Stading (RISE and Chalmers University of Technology). This annual meeting is an important meeting platform for rheologists mainly from the Nordic countries, but it attracts also delegates from other countries as well. In fact, 17 nations were represented at the meeting and in total about 125 participants were registered, which certainly was satisfying for the organizers. Following the tradition of earlier NRCs, the conference was preceded by a rheology course given by three of the invited lecturers. The topics covered an introduction to rheology, rheology of nanocellulosics and polymer rheology. This year the course was followed by around 30 participants and again it can be pointed to that focused courses of this kind constitute a valuable addition to the rheology meetings.

The delegates were welcomed by the chairmen Roland Kádár and Mats Stading and the actual conference was opened by a plenary lecture given by the invited speaker Gareth McKinley from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor McKinley gave an inspiring presentation on how to use Fourier Transform rheology via exponential chirp signals to assess the viscoelastic behaviour of soft materials and gels. Although all aspects of rheology are intended to be covered at the NRC, the special theme this year was chosen to be “Rheology of cellulose systems”. This was also the largest session containing 13 oral presentations. The other sessions were General rheology, Food and bio-rheology, Rheometry and, Fluid mechanics and flow simulations. Altogether 47 contributions were presented orally during the three days and the poster session, taking place August 22, contained 32 contributions.

In addition to Professor McKinley’s opening lecture, there were also three other plenary lectures given by invited distinguished scientists, Professor Alain Dufresne from Grenoble INP, Professor Daniel Söderberg, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm and Professor Paula Moldenaers from KU Leuven. The “Cellulose session” was opened by Alain Dufresne on Thursday morning, who in a very interesting lecture summarized the morphological aspects on cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) and cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) as well as their mechanical, thermal, rheological, optical and barrier properties. He also pointed to the possibilities to functionalize these nanomaterials in order to e. g. facilitate their use as reinforcing elements in composites. Daniel Söderberg continued in his energetic lecture the cellulose track and described in detail how hydrodynamics and chemistry can be combined in order to produce thin cellulose fibres based on CNF. Using a specially designed flow cell they have succeeded in aligning the cellulose nanofibrils and thus achieving stiff fibers. This is an ongoing work. On Friday morning, Paula Moldenaers described the interplay between the morphology, rheology and electrical properties of blends of copolymers filled with carbon nanotubes (CNT). An aim was to promote the electrical conductivity using as low amounts of CNT as possible. In this context, it could be advantageous if the CNT were confined to one of the polymer phases and formed a percolating network. The percolation was here characterized by following the storage modulus at low frequencies and complemented by evaluation f the electrical performance.

As before, this Nordic Rheology conference covered many different aspects of the flow behaviour of materials as illustrated both by the oral presentations as well as by the poster session. This was also evident from the backgrounds of the contributors ranging from organic chemists to those devoted to fluid dynamics and flow simulations. It is a more or less an impossible task to review most of the presentations given in an appropriate manner and this is not the aim of this short summary. More details of the conference can however be found in the Annual Transactions of the Nordic Rheology Society (Volume 27), edited by Simon Ingelsten and Roland Kádár. In order to display the breadth of the conference content topics like ice cream rheology, viscosity control of dense suspensions, dispersion and percolation of nanocrystalline cellulose particles in polymers, viscosity of oil-based drilling fluids, recent development in extensional rheology and pipe rheology can be mentioned (among others).

A novel feature of the meeting was the “Industrial workshop” which took place Wednesday afternoon. The workshop was initiated by Fredrik Innings, TetraPak, and Gustaf Mårtensson, Mycronic AB, and an aim was to identify common industrial issues and possible ways to address them. For example, which are the most important information that can be obtained from using computational fluid dynamics? Other subjects were also discussed in smaller groups and a continuation of this initial workshop can hopefully be anticipated.

The social events were apparently well received by the participants. Gothenburg City hosted an appreciated reception in the evening of the first day (August 21) in the Chalmers Conference Centre and the delegates were welcomed by the mayor of Gothenburg The conference dinner took place at Chalmersska Huset located at the moat of the old city. This was also the place where William Chalmers, who founded the school which eventually became the Chalmers University of Technology, lived. The organizers deserve all credits for an excellently organized conference (and dinner).

Next year’s Annual European Rheology Conference will take place in June 3-5, 2020, at Aalto University, Helsinki (Espoo), Finland.

Mikael Rigdahl