15th Specialist conference for foam plastics Kurfürstliches Schloß, Mainz
Dr. Ing. Nikolai Popov was born on 2.11.1943 in Sofia. After graduating from the Technical University in Sofia as a graduate engineer, specializing in mechanical engineering, he joined the Institute of Metallurgy and Technology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia as a research assistant in 1967, where he had been working in the field of plastics processing since 1969. After a special training on processing problems in injection moulding of plastics at ZIS, Halle/GDR, Popov was particularly concerned with the problem of injection moulding of thermoplastic foam plastics using the gas counterpressure method. In 1978 he received his doctorate as Dr.-Ing. at the Technological Institute, where he then worked for 4 years in the research department. Since 1982 Popov has been a lecturer and returned to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He published several fundamental papers on injection moulding of foam plastics, especially on integral foam injection moulding. He also developed technological process solutions for these manufacturing techniques and their applications. Popov works closely with renowned institutes and companies in the plastics industry
The achievement of the award winner is that he developed the technological process “TM” for injection moulding of foam thermoplastics with gas back pressure and his research has established its effect on the macrostructure formation of integral foam thermoplastics.