Influence of stretching on the resilience of LLDPE monofilaments for application in artificial turf

Abstract

AbstractPolymeric filaments have been used successfully in artificial turf, however lack of resilience and excessive fibrillation are still the main problems encountered on artificial turf fields and especially when used for football. Resilience is the ability to recover rapidly from a deformation, especially from a bending deformation. FIFA and EN standards recognize the 0.8 m‐Lisport for predicting filament behavior, but this method does not provide any information concerning the resilience of individual filaments. Furthermore, it is merely a qualitative method that only assesses the system in its entirety. The research presented in this article is twofold, first to develop a test method to assess the resilience of a single filament and to correlate with the established methodology, dynamic bending by Favimat R. Second to characterize fiber morphology and to correlate the morphology characteristics with the resilience measurements. A good correlation of the static bending with dynamic bending is obtained and both test methods provide valuable information about the influence of the processing parameters on the resilience. Dynamic scanning calorimetry, Raman and WAXS measurements clearly prove the influence of the structure and more specifically of the amorphous phase on the resilience. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012