Prediction of tensile modulus of semicrystalline polymers from a single melting curve recorded by calorimetry

Abstract

This work introduces an easy calculation method, which results in the elastic modulus of semicrystalline polymers from data obtained from a single melting curve recorded by calorimetry. It is well known that the mechanical properties of semicrystalline polymers depend on the crystalline structure; however, the number of direct correlations between crystalline structure and mechanical properties is limited. The melting and crystallization of the polymers studied in this work were measured using calorimetry; the mechanical properties were estimated by tensile tests on the standard shape specimens. Good agreement was found between the calculated and measured modulus values, indicating that the correlation is reliable. In addition, the method was tested for polypropylene and polyamide-6 which proves clearly that the correlation reported here is generally valid for semicrystalline polymers.