Effect of cooling rate on fracture behavior of polypropylene

The purpose of this work is to investigate the influence of morphology, induced by cooling rate during molding, on the time-temperature dependence of fracture behavior of polypropylene (PP). Fractures tests were performed over a range of loading rates from 0.2 mm/min to 2.5 m/s, using the single edge notched bending specimen. The results show that the transition temperature from brittle to ductile behavior increases with decreasing cooling rate. However, at very low loading speed (0.2 mm/min), an opposite effect is observed, the brittle-ductile transition temperature diminishes with lower cooling rate. At low test speeds, the fracture performance is reduced with a decreasing cooling rate. Conversely, under impact, the fracture toughness of PP is enhanced with a decrease in cooling rate. This is explained by the mechanism of blunting of the crack tip due to adiabatic heating under high loading rates. The blunting effect results in a more significant plastic deformation of the crystalline region that requires a higher energy. The brittle-ductile transition was characterized by an energy activation process expressed by the Arrhenius equation. Decreasing the cooling rate results in a decrease of both the pre-exponential factor and the energy barrier controlling the time-temperature dependence of fracture behavior. The reduction of the pre-exponential factor corresponds to a more ordered morphology due to a reduction in the entropy and is consistent with a higher crystallinity. The reduction of activation energy with higher crystalline level suggests that the brittle-ductile transition also involves the primary relaxation process that is known to occur mostly in an amorphous structure. A higher crystallinity would restrain the primary relaxation processes and the brittle-ductile transition becomes more dependent on the secondary movements of the chain segments. The results demonstrate that the relationship between deformation rate, temperature, and mechanical performance of PP is not only controlled by molecular relaxation processes, but also strongly dependent on its morphology. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.