A METHOD TO QUANTIFY CRAZING DEFORMATION BY TENSILE TESTS FOR POLYSTYRENE/POLYOLEFIN ELASTOMER IMMISCIBLE BLENDS

A method to quantify crazing deformations by tensile tests for polystyrene （PS） and polyolefin elastomer （POE） blends was investigated. The toughness of PS/POE blends, reflected by the Charpy impact strength, increased with the content of POE. SEM micrographs showed the poor compatibility between PS and POE. In simple tensile tests, it is very easy to achieve the ratio of crazing deformation, i.e. K by measuring the size changes of samples. The K values decreased with increasing the content of POE, and the deformations of PS/POE blends were dominated by crazing. The plots of the change of volume （△V） against longitudinal variation （△I） showed a linear relationship, and the slope of lines decreased with the content of POE. Measuring samples at the tensile velocities of 5 mm/min, 50 mm/min, and 500 mm/min respectively, the K values kept unchanged for each PS/POE blends.

A METHOD TO QUANTIFY CRAZING DEFORMATION BY TENSILE TESTS FOR POLYSTYRENE/POLYOLEFIN ELASTOMER IMMISCIBLE BLENDS

A method to quantify crazing deformations by tensile tests for polystyrene (PS) and polyolefin elastomer (POE) blends was investigated. The toughness of PS/POE blends, reflected by the Charpy impact strength, increased with the content of POE. SEM micrographs showed the poor compatibility between PS and POE. In simple tensile tests, it is very easy to achieve the ratio of crazing deformation, I.e. K by measuring the size changes of samples. The K values decreased with increasing the content of POE, and the deformations of PS/POE blends were dominated by crazing. The plots of the change of volume (△V) against longitudinal variation (△l) showed a linear relationship, and the slope of lines decreased with the content of POE. Measuring samples at the tensile velocities of 5 mm/min, 50 mm/min, and 500 mm/min respectively, the K values kept unchanged for each PS/POE blends.