Effect of molecular weight on rolled high density polyethylene: 2. Fracture

Abstract

In a previous paper, the effect of molecular weight on the structure, morphology and anisotropic behaviour of high desnity polyethylene (HDPE) has been studied. Entanglements among tie chains connecting the lamella blocks were believed to be the factor that initiated the intrinsic differences. A further study of the fracture behaviour was carried out. It was found that samples with low molecular weight showed brittle fracture with only a small amount of fracture energy being consumed. For high molecular weight samples, a large plastic deformation was associated with the crack extension. The energy consumed for crack extension was almost proportional to the molecular weight. Further stretching of the samples after rolling resulted in a different fracture mechanism and samples showing ductile fracture changed into brittle failure. The morphology of the fracture surface was also studied. It was found that two types of fracture surface existed even for samples with brittle fracture. The fractography was strongly related to the fracture energy. The fracture surface of the ductile failure type samples showed a fibrillar structure. It is suggested that peeling the plastically deformed part off the undeformed surface was the fracture mechanism for the high molecular weight samples. The fracture energy of HDPE without the effect of entanglement was obtained by extrapolating the fracture energy down to zero molecular weight to yield a value of ∼370 Jm −2.