The toughening behavior of the PP/POE alternating multilayered blends under EWF and impact tensile methods

Abstract

The multilayered polypropylene (PP) and poly(ethylene-co-octene) (POE) sheets were prepared by the micro-layered co-extrusion system. The essential work of fracture (EWF) and the impact tensile methods have been successfully used to evaluate the toughening behaviors of the PP/POE multilayered blends under quasi-static and dynamic uniaxial tensile stress, respectively. The experimental results indicate that the multilayered structure plays a key role in the toughening behaviors. On increasing the layer number of the multilayered blends, the specific essential work of fracture, w e, increases obviously. As for the βw p, there is no obvious variation in the multilayered blends with low POE content (6.79%), however, obvious enhancement is observed with increasing the layer number of the high POE content multilayered blends (16.57%). Compared with the conventional blends, the multilayered blends with 6.79% POE content are effective to increase the value of we. Additionally, the multilayered blends with high layer numbers present absolute advantage in improving the impact tensile values.