Reinforced plastics specific properties

The frictional properties of TPs, specifically the reinforced and filled types, vary in a way that is unique from metals. In contrast to metals, even the highly reinforced plastics have low modulus values and thus do not behave according to the classic laws of friction. Metal-to-thermoplastic friction is characterized by adhesion and deformation resulting in frictional forces that are not proportional to load, because friction decreases as load increases, but are proportional to speed. The wear rate is generally defined as the volumetric loss of material over a given unit of time. Several mechanisms operate simultaneously to remove material from the wear interface. However, the primary mechanism is adhesive wear, which is characterized by having fine particles of plastic removed from the surface. 

ISO 3597-2 2003 Textile-glass-reinforced plastics - Determination of mechanical properties on rods made of roving-reinforced resin - Part 2 Determination of flexural strength ISO 5893 2002 Rubber and plastics test equipment - Tensile, flexural and compression types (constant rate of traverse) - Specification ISO 6721-3 1995 Plastics - Determination of dynamic mechanical properties - Part 3 Flexural vibration - Resonance-curve method... 

Table 11 indicates that syntactic plastics are similar in strength properties to monolithic filled systems (glass-reinforced plastics), although their apparent densities are 2-3 times smaller. Hence, syntactic plastics appear to have the highest specific strengths of all known plastic materials. 

Carbon black is produced industrially in the form of different products (e.g., furnace black, thermal black, channel black, lampblack, acetylene black) with specific properties. In addition to the relevance of carbon black for basic research on adsorption, or as a reference sohd, appUcations of this material in fields such as elastomer reinforcement, as modifier of certain properties of plastics (UV protection, electrical conductance, color), or as xerographic toners make its surface and interfacial properties extremely important. Soot is a randomly formed particulate material similar in nature to carbon black. The main (pragmatic, rather than conceptual) difference between these two carbon forms is that soot is generally formed as an unwanted by-product of incomplete combustion of pyrolysis, whereas carbon black is produced under strictly controlled conditions. Bansal and Donnet [78] have reviewed various possible mechanisms for the formation of soot and carbon black. Soot can retain a number of tars and resins on its surface. There is therefore some interest in studying the adsorption of polyaromatic hydrocarbons in soots, especially those of environmental significance such as diesel soot. 

Polymer matrix composites (PMCs), or fiber-reinforced plastics (FRPs). provide a wide range of properties and behavior. Materials with discontinuous fibers are slightly stiffer than conventional unreinforced plastics, whereas the fully aligned continuous fiber systems can record exceptionally high specific properties (property divided by density), exeeeding those of competing materials such as steel and aluminum. There are a virtually infinite number of materials, and material formats that can be combined to form a composite material, as shown in Table 1. 

Favourable specific mechanical properties of continuous fibre-reinforced plastics have made them attractive materials for application to many engineering structures. 

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