Impact properties analysis of rotationally molded polyethylene and polypropylene for a wide range of temperatures.

Abstract

Rotational molding is an established and growing manufacturing method for large, hollow plastic components. In this work the impact properties of rotationally molded Polyethylene (PE) and Polypropylene (PP) were tested at temperature in the range of -40 °C to 30 °C. Dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) was performed to analyse the measured impact properties of PP and PE plastics. For PP, a very good relationship was found between peak impact strength and the loss modulus curve obtained in DMTA analysis. A relationship between density, β peak height and peak impact strength was found for PE which is different from previous findings in the literature. It is concluded that further work should focus on developing an understanding of the PE material's microstructure in order to more fully understand its impact properties.