Study of selected thermoplastics using dynamic mechanical analysis

Abstract

The aim of given paper is to study selected polymers using dynamic mechanical analysis method (DMA). DMA is one of the most useful techniques for the study of the viscoelastic behaviour of thermoplastic polymers. In relation to DMA, an oscillatory stress and strain is applied to the material at specific frequencies and temperatures and based on this mentioned fact hereinbefore, the resulting changes after the loading in the material are measured. This technique allows detecting the melting temperature and the glass transition temperature of the thermoplastic materials. Furthermore, some spectroscopy techniques, such as energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and infrared spectroscopy (IR), were also used for the investigation of the thermoplastics. The thermoplastics used for examination, namely polyethylene, polystyrene, polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate, were gained from the waste of the packaging.

Keywords

• Dynamic mechanical analysis
• infrared spectroscopy
• dispersive X-ray spectroscopy
• thermoplastics
• packaging