Polyethylene drawing

Very high draw ratios can also be obtained by extremely careful one-stage drawing. Capaccio and Ward (1973, 1975) obtained with polyethylene draw ratios up to 30, and moduli up to 70 GPa have been reported. 

The early stages of deformation of a banded spherulite of linear polyethylene draw ratio 1-2. Replica of an etched cut surface. 

The film tube is collapsed within a V-shaped frame of rollers and is nipped at the end of the frame to trap the air within the bubble. The nip roUs also draw the film away from the die. The draw rate is controlled to balance the physical properties with the transverse properties achieved by the blow draw ratio. The tube may be wound as such or may be sHt and wound as a single-film layer onto one or more roUs. The tube may also be direcdy processed into bags. The blown film method is used principally to produce polyethylene film. It has occasionally been used for polypropylene, poly(ethylene terephthalate), vinyls, nylon, and other polymers. 

Fig. 22.6. A schematic drawing of a largely crystalline polymer like high-density polyethylene. At the top the polymer has melted and the chain-folded segments hove unwound.

In another incident a backhoe ruptured a 3-in. polyethylene natural gas pipeline fortunately the gas did not ignite. The drawings were complex and cluttered, and the contractor overlooked the pipeline. A metal detector was not used. This would have detected the pipe as a metal wire was fixed to it, a good practice. In a third incident a worker was hand-digging a trench, as an electric conduit was believed to be present. It was actually an old transfer line for radioactive waste, and he received a small dose of radioactivity. The planner had misread the drawing. 

Fibers are thin threads produced by extruding a molten polymer through small holes in a die, or spinneret. The fibers are then cooled and drawn out, which orients the crystallite regions along the axis of the fiber and adds considerable tensile strength (Figure 31.3). Nylon, Dacron, and polyethylene all have the semicrystalline structure necessary for drawing into oriented fibers. 

Hence, the extension of an isotropic unoriented partially crystalline polymer leads to the formation of a highly organized material with a characteristic fibrillar structure. The anisotropy of the sample as a whole is expressed by a higher modulus, tenacity and optical anisotropy. It would seem that the increase in strength in the drawing direction suggests that the oriented samples consist of completely extended chains. However, while the strength of such perfect structure for polyethylene has been evaluated as 13000 MPas), the observed values for an oriented sample are 50 to 30 MPa. 

Evidence for this behaviour has indeed been found [98] for (100) faces of polyethylene. It is rather indirect, however, as it draws on a combination of kinetic data from single crystals and twins, so that the results must be treated with great caution, as noted in Sect. 3.4.3. 

Fig. 25. Observed and calculated 2H spectra for the crystalline regions of drawn (k m 9) linear polyethylene for various angles of p0 between the draw direction and the magnetic field B0...

Kashiwagi et al.10) determined the second moment anisotropy for the one-way drawn polyethylene terephthalate sheets discussed above. The three lattice sums S00, S2q and S4o were calculated from the crystal structure determination of Daubeny et al., the proton positions being calculated on the basis of known bond angles and lengths. The isotropic lattice sum S00 was adjusted to a value consistent with the measured isotropic second moment of 10.3G2. The values for P200, P220 etc. were then used to predict the optical anisotropy. The predicted refractive indices for the sheets of draw ratio 2 1 and 2.5 1 are shown in Fig. 10, together with the experimental... 

Acetylene (ethyne), C2H2, can be polymerized, (a) Draw the Lewis structure for acetylene and draw a Lewis structure for the polymer that results when acetylene is polymerized. The polymer has formula (CH), where n is large, (b) Consider the polymers polyacetylene and polyethylene. The latter has the formula (CH2)W and is an insulating material (plastic wrap is made of polyethylene), whereas polyacetylene is a darkly colored material that can conduct electricity when properly treated. On the basis of your answer to part (a), suggest an explanation for the difference in the two polymers. 

C13-0032. Draw molecular pictures that illustrate the linkages in each of the following polymer types polyethylene, polyester, polyamide, polyether, and silicone. 

C13-0052. Draw a section of the pol3Tner chain for polybutadiene and describe how it differs from polyethylene. 

C13-0123. Draw the structures of polyethylene and the copolymer of butadiene and styrene, showing at least six repeat units for each polymer. On the basis of their molecular structures, explain why polyethylene is more rigid than butadiene-styrene copolymer. 

On the Figures 1 and 2, the schematical drawings of cells for charge-discharge cycles are shown. On the Fig. 1, the cell in the "soft" pouch, formed by welding of three-layer material (lavsan-aluminium-polyethylene) on polyethylene layer, is shown. 

Similarly large anisotropies were later reported for highly emissive blends of alkoxy-substituted bis(phenylethynyl)benzene derivatives and polyolefins such as linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) and isotactic polypropylene (z-PP) [8,9]. The latter systems reach high levels of anisotropy at very low draw ratios, which is advantageous from a processing point of view. 

Elenga, R., Seguela, R. and Rietsch, F., Thermal and mechanical behaviour of crystalline polyethylene terephthalate) effects of high temperature annealing and tensile drawing, Polymer, 32, 11, 1975-1981 (1991). 

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