Hard elastic materials

A third observation obtained from Figure 27 is the disappearance of these fissures as soon as the film is locally separated (Fig. 27 a, arrow B). It must be assumed, therefore, that the deformation lines close upon stress relieve just as in hard-elastic materials. A characteristic feature of some of those highly crystalline, highly oriented polymers is the fact that they can be extended by 50-100%, this extension being practically completely and inmiediately reversible... 

On the other hand, a number of publications which describe the preparation, morphology and properties of hard elastic materials, for example have also... 

Make sure that the shear amplitude X is small enough. The modulation amplitude Xo must be small compared to the contact radius a(P,t) to avoid non-linear response due to micro-slip and to insure that the contact does not slide. For hard elastic materials, this requires that X be a few angstroms or less. For more compliant materials, larger X can be used in some circumstances, but near pull-off X must remain small compared to the contact ra-... 

Cellulose nitrate, also called nitrocellulose or gun cotton, first became prominent after Christian Schonbein prepared it in 1846. He was quick to recognize the commercial value of this material as an explosive, and within a year gun cotton was being manufactured. However, more important to the rise of the polymer industry, cellulose nitrate was found to be a hard elastic material which was soluble and could be moulded into different shapes by the application of heat and pressure. Alexander Parkes was the first to take advantage of this combination of properties and in 1862 he exhibited articles made from Parkesine, a form of plasticized cellulose nitrate. In 1870 John and Isaiah Hyatt patented a similar but more easily processed material, named celluloid, which was prepared using camphor as the plasticizer. Unlike Parkesine, celluloid was a great commercial success. 

Because the indentation varies with time, the modulus must be specified for a certain indentation time, eg, a 10-s modulus. The Hertz equation holds only for purely elastic materials. However, it has been appHed to viscoelastic materials, including polymers and coatings, with excellent results (249—256). Indentation hardness vs temperature curves are shown in Figure 40 (249,251). 

Factors of hardness, elasticity, toughness, and cleavage are important in determining grindabihty. Grindabihty is related to modulus of elasticity and speed of sound in the material [Dahlhoff, Chem. Ing. Tech., 39(19), 1112-1116 (1967)]. 

Pa, would deform appreciably under the action of loads comparable to the pull-off force given by Eq. 16. It is for this reason that the JKR type measurements are usually done on soft elastic materials such as crosslinked PI rubber [45,46] or crosslinked PDMS [42-44,47-50]. However glassy polymers such as polystyrene (PS) and PMMA are relatively hard, with bulk moduli of the order of 10 Pa. It can be seen from Eq. 11 that a varies as Thus, increasing K a factor of... 

Indentation has been used for over 100 years to determine hardness of materials [8J. For a given indenter geometry (e.g. spherical or pyramidal), hardness is determined by the ratio of the applied load to the projected area of contact, which was determined optically after indentation. For low loads and contacts with small dimensionality (e.g. when indenting thin films or composites), a new way to determine the contact size was needed. Depth-sensing nanoindentation [2] was developed to eliminate the need to visualize the indents, and resulted in the added capability of measuring properties like elastic modulus and creep. 

The modulus term in this equation can be obtained in the same way as in the previous example. However, the difference in this case is the term V. For elastic materials this is called Poissons Ratio and is the ratio of the transverse strain to the axial strain (See Appendix C). For any particular metal this is a constant, generally in the range 0.28 to 0.35. For plastics V is not a constant. It is dependent on time, temperature, stress, etc and so it is often given the alternative names of Creep Contraction Ratio or Lateral Strain Ratio. There is very little published information on the creep contraction ratio for plastics but generally it varies from about 0.33 for hard plastics (such as acrylic) to almost 0.5 for elastomers. Some typical values are given in Table 2.1 but do remember that these may change in specific loading situations. 

A much more heavily crosslinked material can be obtained by increasing the amount of sulfur in the mixture, so that it represents about a third of the mass of the product. Heating such a mixture of raw mbber and sulfur at 150 °C until reaction is complete gives a hard, thermoset material that is not at all elastic. This material is called ebonite and is used to make car battery cases. 

Since it measures the susceptibility of materials to plastic deformation (as contrasted with elastic deformation), hardness is very important for diagnosing the mechanical state of a material, in particular toughness. Purely elastic materials are brittle. Plasticity, by blunting cracks and other defects, allows metals and, to some extent ceramics, to tolerate small flaws and thereby become malleable and tough. 

Softening as a result of micro-Brownian motion occurs in amorphous and crystalline polymers, even if they are crosslinked. However, there are characteristic differences in the temperature-dependence of mechanical properties like hardness, elastic modulus, or mechanic strength when different classes of polymers change into the molten state. In amorphous, non-crosslinked polymers, raise of temperature to values above results in a decrease of viscosity until the material starts to flow. Parallel to this softening the elastic modulus and the strength decrease (see Fig. 1.9). 

The sensitivity of expls is a characteristic of great importance and can be correlated with the rate of deton. Perfect crysts and other nearly perfect elastic materials are the most sensitive, while liquids or colloids (plastic, fluid or hard) resist initiation and also have tendency to damp out-the wave of deton. The sensitivities of endothermic and exothermic compds are different and this causes them... 

Physical properties of solid materials which are greatly influenced by the presence of defects of lattice order in real single crystals are called structural-sensitive properties, and are distinguished from intrinsic properties, which are determined by the elements constituting the crystal, for example the chemical bonds, the structure, etc. Color, plasticity, glide, and semiconductor properties are structural-sensitive properties, whereas density, hardness, elasticity, and optical, thermal, and magnetic properties are the intrinsic properties. Structural-sensitive... 

The most suitable physical properties are likely to depend on the particular material, with plastics test methods being used for the harder elastomers (where the title elastomer may not even seem appropriate) and rubber methods for the less hard and more elastic materials. Where thermoplastic elastomers are to compete with conventional rubbers then clearly rubber test methods will be expected. On the other hand, where they are being compared to normal thermoplastics it would seem reasonable to use appropriate plastics test methods. 

In view of these complexities, it is remarkable that Eq. 4.1-4 represents numerous metal-metal, dry frictional data rather well, for both the static and sliding cases. Polymers, on the other hand, exhibit an even more complex frictional behavior on metal. This is, perhaps, not surprising, since the physical situation involves a relatively soft, viscoelastic, and temperature-dependent material in contact with a hard, elastic, and much less temperature- and rate-dependent material. Empirical evidence of these complexities is the nonlinear relationship between the frictional force and the normal load... 

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