Zero-shear melt viscosity, glass transition

Some modifications of the melt flow behavior of thermoplastics that can be observed depending on filler concentration are a yield-like behavior (i.e., in these cases, there is no flow until a finite value of the stress is reached), a reduction in die swell, a decrease of the shear rate value where nonlinear flow takes place, and wall slip or nearwall slip flow behavior [14, 27, 46]. Other reported effects of flllers on the rheology of molten polymers are an increase of both the shear thinning behavior and the zero-shear-rate viscosity with the filler loading and a decrease in the dependence of the filler on viscosity near the glass transition temperature [18, 47-49]. 

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