Amorphous polymers transition viscoelastic

The challenges involved in the material properties of PPC relate to its thermal features, i.e., its thermal decomposition, and the glass transition temperature (Tg) of about body temperature of the otherwise amorphous polymer. These have implications for processing and application of the material. This review will discuss consecutively the thermal, viscoelastic, and mechanical properties of PPC and the experiences in processing PPC and its composites. The properties of solutions of PPC will also be presented, and the biodegradabUity and biocompatibility discussed. Spectroscopic properties will not be discussed. Further information on NMR data can be found in the following references [2, 10-12]. A t3 pical spectrum is shown in Fig. 2 [13]. 

Linear amorphous polymers can behave as either Hookian elastic (glassy) materials, or highly elastic (rubbery) substances or as viscous melts according to prevailing temperature and time scale of experiments. The different transitions as shown schematically in Figure 5.1 are manifestations of viscoelastic deformations, which are time dependent [1]. 

With polymers, complications may potentially arise due to the material viscoelastic response. For glassy amorphous polymers tested far below their glass transition temperature, such viscoelastic effects were not found, however, to induce a significant departure from this theoretical prediction of the boundary between partial slip and gross slip conditions [56]. 

A common practice is to reduce relaxation or creep data to the temperature Tg thus, the reference temperature is picked as the glass transition temperature measured by some slow technique such as dilatometry. The reason for choosing Tg as the reference temperature is founded on the idea that all amorphous polymers at their glass transition temperature will have similar viscoelastic behavior. This type of corresponding states principal is often expressed in terms of a hopefully universal mathematical relationship between the shift factor aT at a particular temperature and the difference between Tg and this temperature. Perhaps the most well known of these relationships is the WLF equation... 

It has been repeatedly emphasized throughout this book that the glass transition in amorphous polymers is accompanied by profound changes in their viscoelastic response. Thus the stress relaxation modulus commonly decreases... 

Thermoplasts are linear or weakly branched polymers. Their application temperature lies below the melting temperature in the case of crystalline polymers and below the glass transition temperature in the case of amorphous polymers. They are converted to an easily deformable plastic state on heating above these characteristic temperatures. This plastic state can be termed liquid with respect to the molecular order, or viscoelastic with respect to the rheological behavior. On cooling below the characteristic temperatures,... 

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