Thermal analysis for plastics and rubber engineering

A survey of the possibilities of Thermal Analysis (TA) in the plastics and rubber industry is presented. As well as giving examples from research (liquid crystalline main and side chain polymers) and construction (laminates of carbon fibre reinforced epoxy resin prepregs), the field of quality assurance and material characterization is specially discussed. The correlation between TA-characteristics such as the degree of crystallinity and mechanical properties (e.g. hardness or green strength) is demonstrated. The application of thermogravimetry for a precise compositional analysis of compounded rubbers is shown. In practice, Thermal Analysis is most important for failure analysis and the characterization of processing parameters during the production of moulded parts as TA-methods are usually much faster than traditional standard methods. Moreover, the increasing importance of combining TA-methods with other techniques of instrumental analysis is demonstrated. An example of this combination is the TG-DSC-MS coupling which is invaluable in the area of environmental protection especially in the production, application and recycling of moulded parts from polymeric materials.