Rheology of highly filled polypropylene compounds: Measurement and applications

It is common knowledge among rheologists as well as polymer engineers that compounds of thermoplastics with a high volume content of mineral fillers show a viscoelastic behaviour which is significantly different from homogeneous systems. A strong nonlinearity is combined with the development of a second plateau region of the dynamic moduli at lower frequencies. This for one makes the rheological characterization of these materials more complicated, as could be shown in a round robin test, including a PP-compound with talc. The linearity criterion has to be handled carefully to achieve comparable and representative results. However, the viscoelasticity gives access to a quick characterization method regarding dispersion quality in compounds. This can be shown for the case of PP-talc-compounds, where correlations between relaxation spectrum and impact strength could be developed.