Abstract
Within this paper, we are dealing with a mixture of thermoplastic polymer that is filled with inorganic fillers at high concentrations up to 60 vol.%. A high number of particles in the compound can substantially change the rheological behaviour of the composite and can lead to problems during processing in the molten state. The rheological behaviour of highly filled materials is complex and influenced by many interrelated factors. In the present investigation, we considered four different spherical materials: steel, aluminium alloy, titanium alloy and glass. Particles with similar particle size distribution were mixed with a binder system at different filling grades (30–60 vol.%). We showed that the rheological behaviour of highly filled materials is significantly dependent on the chemical interactions between the filler and matrix material. Moreover, it was shown that the changes of the particle shape and size during processing lead to unexpected rheological behaviour of composite materials as it was observed in the composites filled with glass beads that broke at high contents during processing.
Highlights
Filled polymers are polymer composites with particles, added at concentrations well above 20 vol.%
One of the major applications of highly filled polymers with more than 40 vol.% is the indirect fabrication of metal, ceramic, or cermet parts with complex geometry in processes like powder injection moulding (PIM) [13], powder extrusion moulding (PEM) [14,15], and more recently, powder fused filament fabrication (PFFF) [10]
We compared the rheological properties of different spherical filler materials with similar particlewe sizecompared distribution three filler loadings
Summary
Filled polymers are polymer composites with particles, added at concentrations well above 20 vol.%. One of the major applications of highly filled polymers with more than 40 vol.% is the indirect fabrication of metal, ceramic, or cermet parts with complex geometry in processes like powder injection moulding (PIM) [13], powder extrusion moulding (PEM) [14,15], and more recently, powder fused filament fabrication (PFFF) [10]. All these technologies follow three main steps after the preparation of the highly filled thermoplastic compound.
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