Morphology and mechanical properties of foamed polyethylene-polypropylene blends

Blends of high-density polyethylene and polypropylene are foamed by means of extrusion using azodicarbonamide as a chemical blowing agent to study the effect of blending on the morphological and mechanical properties. At 0.5 wt% of blowing agent, optimum foam density is found to be around 417 kg/m(3) for each blend composition, but the average cell size ranges between 130 and 301 mu m depending on the blend composition. It is believed that the dispersed polymer phase acts as nucleating sites producing foams with smaller cell sizes. Owing to the incompatibility between both the polymers, the best tensile and impact properties are obtained for neat polymers. Simple semi-empirical models are proposed to predict the tensile and impact properties of the foams.