Development of a new thermoplastic laminate system

Abstract

In this investigation an all-olefin thermoplastic laminate was developed and characterized. Commingled glass-fiber polypropylene (PP) composite was used as skin and HDPE (PE) foam with closed cells as core. Infra-red heating was used for melting the surfaces of the substrates for surface fusion bonding with a cold press. Two tie-layer films, viz., ethylene-propylene copolymer (EPC) and HDPE/elastomer blend were used as hot-melt adhesives for bonding the substrates. Singlelap shear joints were prepared from PP composite and PE foam adherends with a bonding area of 25.4 mm × 25.4 mm to determine the bond strength. EPC tie-layer adhesive provided higher bond strength (2.68 × 106 N/m2) to the all-olefin laminate than that based on HDPE/elastomer blend (1.93 × 106 N/m2). For EPC tie-layer-based laminates, a mixed mode of failure was observed in the failed lap shear samples: about 40% was cohesive failure through the tie-layer, and the rest of failure was interfacial, either at PP composite or PE foam surfaces. Environmental scanning electron micrographs (ESEM) revealed that in the process of surface fusion bonding, PE foam cells in the vicinity of interphase (800-μm-thick) were coalesced with high temperature and pressure. No macro-level penetration of the tie-layer melt front into the foam cells was observed. As the surface morphology of foam was altered due to IR surface heating and the PP composite bonding side had a resin-rich layer, the bonding situation was closer to that between two polymer film surfaces.