Abstract
AbstractIn the present state of development of the polymer industry, all of the lower cost, widely used, plastics exhibit some susceptibility to environmental stress crazing. Past developments have improved some polymers' resistance to this phenomenon (e.g., the addition of rubber to polystyrene) and this paper considers one such improved polymer, high‐impact polystyrene, and examines its craze and creep resistance in the alcohols. This family of fluids does not affect the unstressed polymer but has a marked effect when the polymer is stressed. The results of creep tests at different stresses indicate the existence of a delay time after which the creep rate accelerates rapidly. The requirement of a definitive time under stpess before this acceleration occurs is supported by the results of cyclic stress tests. Plots of delay time against stress for the different alcohols show two distinct regions: (i) at high stresses, where the delay time increases from methanol to butanol and the mechanism would appear to be one of molecular volume controlling the mobility of the fluid to “penetrate” the polymer, and (ii) at low stresses, where the delay time decreases from methanol to butanol and the criterion would appear to be that of ability to “plasticize” the polymer as evidenced by the solubility parameters.
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