Effect of various formulation ingredients on thermal characteristics of PVC/clay nanocomposite foams: experimental and modeling

Abstract

Abstract The effect of various ingredients – nanoclay (NC), azodicarbonamaide (ADCA), paraloeid K-400 and calcium stearate (Ca.St) – on thermal behavior of melt blended poly (vinyl chloride)/NC nanocomposites was investigated. Combinations of two artificial intelligence algorithms were performed for modeling of the systems. The formulation ingredients affect the thermal features of the compounds. Upon increasing the effect of various ingredients, i.e. NC, ADCA, K-400 and Ca.St, an increase in ash content was observed, hence, the thermal stability increased. The effect of ingredients on initial degradation temperature (T5%) and half degradation temperature (T50%) was not obvious. The artificial neural network (model) and the clonal selection algorithm (optimizer) were performed for proper modeling of the systems. These models were used to determine the role of T5%, T50% and char based on the contents of ingredients. The result successfully modeled the process parameters.