Reinforced products, life cycle

The business climate of the 1990s is different from the past. Factors such as increased competition, a global marketplace, rapid technical shifts, and greatly compressed product life cycles constantly open new opportunities for plastics in general and reinforced plastics in particular. Reinforced plastics have become widely accepted for particular appHcations because they offer a combination of design, performance, and economic benefits to the user. These materials have had a proven record of success since the 1940s. 

In conclusion, the important role of the microbiologists in the pharmaceutical industry should be reinforced. The need to involve experieneed mierobiologists in each stage of the product life cycle to maintain high quality, safety, and efficacy is highlighted in this article. 

None of these is independent of the other products may be brought into development along the timeline of vintages these may be inserted into one or more therapeutic areas and matched for their profit or market size. Major brands can be reinforced by life-cycle management initiatives including new formulations to extend the main franchise, different forms to suit a wider catchment of patients and the extension to new indications possibly by the use of different or novel formulations at the same time. 

There are no simple rules of thumb in defining the cost of reinforced plastic components. Their successful use has resulted from proper design, utilizing the benefits these materials offer, process selection, tooling cost advantages that fit the production needs, and consideration of life cycle economics. Each existing application illustrates the cost-performance advantage of reinforced plastic over the traditional material that is displaced. 

Volume 1 of this book is comprised of 25 chapters, and discusses the different types of natural rubber based blends and IPNs. The first seven chapters discuss the general aspects of natural rubber blends like their miscibility, manufacturing methods, production and morphology development. The next ten chapters describe exclusively the properties of natural rubber blends with different polymers like thermoplastic, acrylic plastic, block or graft copolymers, etc. Chapter 18 deals entirely with clay reinforcement in natural rubber blends. Chapters 19 to 23 explain the major techniques used for characterizing various natural rubber based blends. The final two chapters give a brief explanation of life cycle analysis and the application of natural rubber based blends and IPNs. 

Because of waste accumulation at the end of the life cycle of traditional polymer products, the development of environmentally-ffiendly, degradable, polymeric materials has attracted extensive interest. Nevertheless, the properties of such kinds of polymers are lower than that of traditional ones. Thermoplastic polymers have been widely used as matrix of composites reinforced with natural fibers in order to achieve a final material with improved mechanical properties with respect to the pure polymer. In order to obtain competitive products, the performance of biodegradable polymers can be greatly enhanced by the incorporation of nanometer-size fillers. 

Vulcanisation of the rubber does not cease completely at the end of the press/cure cycle. As the temperature of the moulded product reduces, the rate of vulcanisation decreases, but it does still continue, even into service life. Many maturation reactions take place as the product returns to ambient temperatures and even in service some crosslinking reactions will still take place over an extended period of time. The filler, usually carbon black for most components, will form its own reinforcement structure over a period of time, thus contributing to the required product properties. Testing of the product too early can result in overstressing of the rubber in critical stress zones and this in itself can lead to premature failure of the product in service. 

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