Polymer Engineering and Science articles from April 2005

Polymer Engineering and Science archives from April 2005

Experimental studies on the development of a cast film.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Commercial polymer films are typically produced either in a film blowing or a film casting process. Both of these processes feature regions of elongational flow immediately downstream from the die and also in the subsequent...

Intercalation and exfoliation of talc by solid-state shear compounding ([S.sup.3]C) using pan-mill equipment.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Since a clay-reinforced nylon nanocomposite with excellent properties was developed by the Toyota group [1], much attention has been paid to developing layered silicate as a reinforcement material for polymers. The preparation...

Oriented crystallization and mechanical properties of polypropylene nucleated on fibrillated polytetrafluoroethylene scaffolds.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) possesses a unique combination of properties such as low bulk shear strength, low surface tension, low coefficient of friction, low yield stress, and high toughness [1]. Due to the low...

Morphology and properties of layered silicate-polyethylene nanocomposite blown films.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Layered silicates consist of particles of one to a few nanometers thick but hundreds to thousands nanometers long [1]. The large aspect ratio of the nanoparticles makes it possible to use a small filler loading (usually [less...

Curing and pyrolysis of cresol novolac epoxy resins containing BABODOPN.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Epoxy is the most extensively used high-performance polymer in the world. It has excellent characteristics, such as high chemical, moisture, and corrosion resistance, outstanding adhesion properties, low shrinkage upon curing,...

Fracture toughness and impact strength of anhydride-cured biobased epoxy.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION The importance of environmentally friendly natural products for industrial applications has become radically clear in recent years with increasing emphasis on environmental issues, waste disposal, and depletion of...

Kinetic analysis and mechanical properties of nanoclay reinforced unsaturated polyester (UP) resins cured at low temperatures.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Among various thermoset resins, unsaturated polyesters (UP) resins are the most widely used matrix materials in polymeric composites. They represent approximately 75% of the total thermoset composites market by tonnage [1]....

Fatigue performance of an injection molded talc-filled polypropylene.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION During the past several years, both unfilled and filled thermoplastic polymers have found increasing number of applications in structures that are subjected to cyclic or fatigue loading. Many of these structures may experience...

Auxetic polypropylene films.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Auxetic materials [1, 2] are those which when stretched expand rather than contract in width. In other words, they display negative Poisson's ratio behavior. A variety of products have been fabricated in auxetic form including...

Irradiation-induced surface graft polymerization onto calcium carbonate nanoparticles and its toughening effects on polypropylene composites.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Nanocomposites are attracting increasing research and market interest because of their potential for providing novel performance. It is believed that the tremendous interfacial area in a polymer nanocomposite helps to...

Dynamic properties of rubber vibration isolators and antivibration performance of nanoclay-modified PU/PEL blends system.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Polymers exhibit uniquely high damping behavior in their glass transition zone due to conversion of mechanical vibration into heat energy through friction between molecular chains and heat dissipation [1]. However, this high...

Rheology of wood plastics melt. Part 1. Capillary rheometry of HDPE filled with maple.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Natural fiber composites have attracted increasing attention since the late 1980's owing to the potential ecological and economic advantage of the lignocellulosic fibers [1-5]. The wood-plastics composites (WPC) industry has...

Rheokinetics of the cross-linking of melt polyethylene initiated by peroxide.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Classically, the kinetic parameters are taken as constants during the whole reaction process, which coincides with experimental results in most inorganic and small organic molecular reaction systems. But it is not the same...

Novel fabrication route for auxetic polyethylene. Part 1. Processing and microstructure.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Synthetic auxetic materials have been fabricated since 1987 [1] when Lakes produced a polymeric foam with a negative Poisson's ratio, [nu]. The wide range of potential applications for auxetic materials has resulted in the...

Photo-induced scission and crosslinking in LDPE, LLDPE, and HDPE.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION Photooxidation of polyethylenes has been studied intensively over the past three decades [1-4]. This stems from its high volume usage, which makes information regarding its chemical degradation of vital practical importance,...

Crystallization and chemi-crystallization of recycled photodegraded polyethylenes.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION The crystallization of polymers depends on many factors, including the shape and stereoregularity of the repeat unit, the presence of branches and crosslinks, and the molecular chain length in the linear segments. With...

Orientation and strain cycle effects on the impact performance of polyethylene.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION The state of microstructural orientation within a polymer can be of great technological significance. Preferentially aligning the microstructural units--chains or crystallites--into a specific direction (giving uniaxial...

Real-time monitoring of injection molding for microfluidic devices using ultrasound.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION A microfluidic device, consisting of one or more channels with at least one dimension less than 1 mm, has attractive features such as small sample requirement and low power consumption, realizing a lab-on-a chip device [1]....

Injection molding of long sisal fiber-reinforced polypropylene: effects of compatibilizer concentration and viscosity on fiber adhesion and thermal degradation.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION The incorporation of natural fibers into thermoplastic polymer matrices reduces cost and weight, as these fibers are cheaper than synthetic polymers and have lower density. The incorporation of cellulosic natural fibers in...

Melt-stable poly(1,4-dioxan-2-one) (co)polymers by ring-opening polymerization via continuous reactive extrusion.
April 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION The recent environmental regulations and growing societal concerns have triggered renewed efforts in the plastic industry to develop new products and processes compatible with our environment. In this respect, the design of...