PARISON SWELL - A NEW MEASUREMENT METHOD AND THE EFFECT OF MOLECULAR-WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION FOR A HIGH-DENSITY POLYETHYLENE

The measurement of parison swell is difficult because swell is a time-dependent phenomenon and because, for a parison, two independent swell ratios must be determined. A new technique has been developed that makes use of a video camera focused on the end of the parison. Unlike previous techniques designed to measure time-dependent swell, no oil bath is required. The new technique was used to study the effect of molecular weight parameters on the parison swell of high density polyethylene. For a series of blends of two resins having significantly different weight-average molecular weights, the blends exhibited larger swell ratios than the base resins.