Polypropylene pressure, effect

M.T. Cidade, M. Fernandez, S. FUipe, A. Santamaria, PVT and oscillatory tests to analyze pressure effects on polypropylene/Rodrun LC3000 blends determination of the pressure dependency of the viscosity. Polymer Testing 31 (2) (2012) 290-296. 

Seldon et al. [96] measnred weld line impart strength and tensile strengths on mjertion-molded specimens of fiberglass-reinforced polyamide 6 and talc-reinforced polypropylene. The effect of hold pressure, impart velocity, melt temperature, and mold tanperature on weld line strength was studied. 

In practice the clamping pressure will also depend on the geometry of the cavity. In particular the flow ratio (flow length/channel lateral dimension) is important. Fig. 4.42 illustrates typical variations in the Mean Effective Pressure in the cavity for different thicknesses and flow ratios. The data used here is typical for easy flow materials such as polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene. To calculate the clamp force, simply multiply the appropriate Mean Effective Pressure by the projected area of the moulding. In practice it is... 

From this relatively simple test, therefore, it is possible to obtain complete flow data on the material as shown in Fig. 5.3. Note that shear rates similar to those experienced in processing equipment can be achieved. Variations in melt temperature and hypostatic pressure also have an effect on the shear and tensile viscosities of the melt. An increase in temperature causes a decrease in viscosity and an increase in hydrostatic pressure causes an increase in viscosity. Topically, for low density polyethlyene an increase in temperature of 40°C causes a vertical shift of the viscosity curve by a factor of about 3. Since the plastic will be subjected to a temperature rise when it is forced through the die, it is usually worthwhile to check (by means of Equation 5.64) whether or not this is signiflcant. Fig. 5.2 shows the effect of temperature on the viscosity of polypropylene. 

Boric acid esters provide for thermal stabilization of low-pressure polyethylene to a variable degree (Table 7). The difference in efficiency derives from the nature of polyester. Boric acid esters of aliphatic diols and triols are less efficient than the aromatic ones. Among polyesters of aromatic diols and triols, polyesters of boric acid and pyrocatechol exhibit the highest efficiency. Boric acid polyesters provide inhibition of polyethylene thermal destruction following the radical-chain mechanism, are unsuitable for inhibition of polystyrene depolymerization following the molecular pattern and have little effect as inhibitors of polypropylene thermal destruction following the hydrogen-transfer mechanism. 

In solution polymerization, monomers mix and react while dissolved in a suitable solvent or a liquid monomer under high pressure (as in the case of the manufacture of polypropylene). The solvent dilutes the monomers which helps control the polymerization rate through concentration effects. The solvent also acts as a heat sink and heat transfer agent which helps cool the locale in which polymerization occurs. A drawback to solution processes is that the solvent can sometimes be incorporated into the growing chain if it participates in a chain transfer reaction. Polymer engineers optimize the solvent to avoid this effect. An example of a polymer made via solution polymerization is poly(tetrafluoroethylene), which is better knoivn by its trade name Teflon . This commonly used commercial polymer utilizes water as the solvent during the polymerization process,... 

This mixed product consists of small, platy particles with a relatively high surface area (15-20 m g ). The principal interest has to date been as a flame retardant Aller, principally for polypropylene. Both component phases decompose endothermically with the release of inert gas at relatively low temperatures. They are stable enough to allow incorporation into polymers such as polypropylene, but not polyamides. The performance of the two phases alone and in combination in polypropylene has been reported [91]. As expected from their thermal properties, hydromagnesite was the more effective flame retardant. The decomposition pathway of hydromagnesite has been shown to be considerably affected by pressure and this may affect its flame retardancy [71]. 

Fig. 5. Distribution of effective viscosity values in molten polypropylene over cross-section of the circular molding slit at specific pressure in the head 45 MPa/m and different core speed (min-1) l - 0 2 — 0.35 3 — 0.87 4 - 1.7 5 - 3.1 6 - 5.0 7— 12.9...

It is worth noting that the method used by Vergnes et al. in experimentally obtaining the relative viscosity equation parameters, a and ft in Eq. 10.3-6. They worked with two almost identical PP homopolymers, one in 4-mm mean pellet diameter form, and the other in the form of small, 750-pm-diameter beads (Solvay Eltex HL 101). A 21-mm Co-TSE was fitted with a rheometric slit of length L = 52 mm, width w = 28 mm, and an adjustable gap spacing 1.5 < h < 2.5 mm. The polypropylene in pellet form was fed at the feed throat and melted. Just before the die, a second feed port introduced the PP in bead form at various rates, resulting in different effective values. Two pressure transducers at the die were used to record the slit pressure drop AP(relative viscosity was then expressed as... 

Many computational studies of the permeation of small gas molecules through polymers have appeared, which were designed to analyze, on an atomic scale, diffusion mechanisms or to calculate the diffusion coefficient and the solubility parameters. Most of these studies have dealt with flexible polymer chains of relatively simple structure such as polyethylene, polypropylene, and poly-(isobutylene) [49,50,51,52,53], There are, however, a few reports on polymers consisting of stiff chains. For example, Mooney and MacElroy [54] studied the diffusion of small molecules in semicrystalline aromatic polymers and Cuthbert et al. [55] have calculated the Henry s law constant for a number of small molecules in polystyrene and studied the effect of box size on the calculated Henry s law constants. Most of these reports are limited to the calculation of solubility coefficients at a single temperature and in the zero-pressure limit. However, there are few reports on the calculation of solubilities at higher pressures, for example the reports by de Pablo et al. [56] on the calculation of solubilities of alkanes in polyethylene, by Abu-Shargh [53] on the calculation of solubility of propene in polypropylene, and by Lim et al. [47] on the sorption of methane and carbon dioxide in amorphous polyetherimide. In the former two cases, the authors have used Gibbs ensemble Monte Carlo method [41,57] to do the calculations, and in the latter case, the authors have used an equation-of-state method to describe the gas phase. 

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