Dr Bill Sampson

Bill Sampson graduated from UMIST in 1989 with a BSc in Paper Science. In 1992, he graduated from the same department with a PhD and joined the staff as a Lecturer, becoming Senior Lecturer in 2004.

Bill's primary research activity concerns the statistical geometry of stochastic fibre networks in two and three-dimensions and the application of these techniques to the model the structures of stochastic fibrous networks; these include commonplace industrially formed materials such as paper, nonwoven textiles and fibrous filter media and novel materials with future applications such as electrospun polymer scaffolds for tissue engineering. The structure of these fibrous materials influences their mechanical performance and transport properties; accordingly, Bill is involved in modelling the mechanical behaviour and dimensional stability of bonded stochastic fibrous networks; he works also on the development of image analytic techniques for characterization of the distributed geometries and bonding potentials of natural fibres and of the two-dimensional textures that characterise the in-plane distribution of mass in stochastic fibre networks. Related work involves the statistical geometry of Poisson line processes in two-dimensions with emphasis on the statistics of the stochastic convex polygons that arise from these.

• Simulation and characterization of flocculated planar fibrous networks.
• Modelling shrinkage and warpage in near-planar stochastic fibrous disks.
• A study of the bonding contribution of natural fibres to the ultimate tensile strength of self-bonded stochastic fibrous networks.
• Characterisation and modelling of the specific tensile strength of self bonded planar stochastic fibrous networks.
• Statistical geometry of nanofibrous assemblies.
• Structure and micro-mechanics of nano-fibrillar cellulose.

• S.J. Eichhorn and W.W. Sampson. Relationships between specific surface area and pore size in electrospun polymer fibre networks. J. Roy. Soc. Interface 7(45):641, 2010.
• W.W. Sampson. Modelling Stochastic Fibrous Materials with Mathematica. Springer-Verlag, London, 2009.
• W.W. Sampson. Materials properties of paper as influenced by its fibrous architecture. Int. Mater. Rev. 54(3):134, 2009.
• C.T.J. Dodson and W.W. Sampson. Structural invariance of stochastic fibrous networks. In Advances in Pulp and Paper Research, Oxford 2009, Trans. XIVth Fund. Res. Symp. (S.J. I'Anson, ed.), pp665, FRC, Manchester, 2009.
• C.T.J. Dodson and W.W. Sampson. Stochastic Fibre Networks. In Information Geometry: Near Randomness and Near Independence, (K.A. Arwini and C.T.J. Dodson, eds.), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2008.
• C.T.J. Dodson and W.W. Sampson. Intrinsic correlation in planar Poisson line processes. Appl. Math. Lett. 22(7):981, 2009.
• S.J. I'Anson, W.W. Sampson and S. Savani. Density dependent influence of grammage on tensile properties of handsheets. J. Pulp Paper Sci. 34(3):182, 2008.
• W.W. Sampson. Unified theory for structural statistics of flocculated and random fibre networks. J. Pulp Paper Sci. 34(2):91, 2008.
• W.W. Sampson and S.J. Urquhart. The contribution of out-of-plane pore dimensions to the pore size distribution of paper and stochastic fibrous materials. J. Porous Mater. 15(4):411, 2008.
• D. Kalaskar, J.E. Gough, R.V. Ulijn, W.W. Sampson, D.J. Scurr, F.J. Rutten, M.R. Alexander, C.L.R. Merry and S.J. Eichhorn. Controlling cell morphology on amino acid modified cellulose. Soft Matter 4(5):1059-1065, 2008.
• W.W. Sampson. Statistical modelling of the pore structure of stochastic fibre networks. Filtration 7(3):251, 2007.
• S.J. I'Anson and W.W. Sampson. Competing Weibull and stress-transfer influences on the specific tensile strength of a bonded fibrous network. Compos. Sci. Tech. 67(7):1650, 2007.
• C.T.J. Dodson and W.W. Sampson. Planar line processes for void and density statistics in thin stochastic fibre networks. J. Statist. Phys. 129(2):311-322, 2007.
• S.J. I'Anson, R.P.A. Constantino, S.M. Hoole and W.W. Sampson. Estimation of the profile of cross-machine shrinkage of paper. Meas. Sci. Tech. 19:015701, 2007.

http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/william.sampson/