Improving Toughness of Polypropylene with Thermoplastic Elastomers in Injection Molding

To improve the toughness of polypropylene, two thermoplastic elastomers were blended with polypropylene separately. Tensile tests, impact tests, three point bending tests, thermal analysis and SEM analysis were performed. Tensile test results give an increase in energy at break which is the toughness of the material. Impact tests showed an increase of impact strength while three-point bending tests showed a decrease in flexural strength of elastomer blended samples. Thermal analysis results prove that crystallinity of blend samples are lower than pure PP sample. Rubber particles were observed to be roughly round on SEM analysis.