Elongational rheology and cohesive fracture of photo-oxidated LDPE

Abstract

It was found recently that low-density polyethylene (LDPE) samples with different degrees of photo-oxidation represent an interesting system to study the transition from ductile to cohesive fracture and the aspects of the cohesive rupture in elongational flow. Sheets of LDPE were subjected to photo-oxidation in the presence of air using a xenon lamp to irradiate the samples for times between 1 day and 6 weeks. Characterisation methods included Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, solvent extraction method, and rheology in shear and uniaxial extensional flows. Linear viscoelasticity was increasingly affected by increasing photo-oxidation due to crosslinking of LDPE, as corroborated by the carbonyl index, acid and aldehydes groups, and gel fraction. The molecular stress function model was used to quantify the experimental data, and the nonlinear model parameter β was found to be correlated with the gel content. The uniaxial data showed that the transition from ductile to cohesive fracture was shifted to lower elongational rates, the higher the gel content was. From 2 weeks photo-oxidation onwards, cohesive rupture occurred at every strain rate investigated. The true strain and true stress at cohesive fracture as well as the energy density applied to the sample up to fracture were analyzed. At low gel content, rupture was mainly determined by the melt fraction while at high gel content, rupture occurred predominantly in the gel structure. The strain at break was found to be independent of strain rate, contrary to the stress at break and the energy density. Thus, the true strain and not the stress at break or the energy density was found to be the relevant physical quantity to describe cohesive fracture behavior of photo-oxidated LDPE. The equilibrium modulus of the gel structures was correlated with the true strain at rupture. The stiffer the gel structure, the lower was the deformation tolerated before the sample breaks.