Microfillers – Advantageous Potential for White Goods Industry

摘要

Market advantage of contemporary appliance product development heavily depends on the polymer materials and related fillers – e.g. micro-fillers. Presented and analyzed is washing machine, its vital product component - plastic tub. Namely, during the product life cycle it is exposed to the simultaneous and severe dynamic thermo-mechanical loads. Material selection for suitable polymer composite is conducted predominantly with time-dependency criteria – creep property at various thermo-mechanical conditions. Experimental validation and polymer material benchmarking is implemented on already regular polymer composites with mineral fillers from 4 different appliance producers (PP + 40 × CaCO₃) on one side with the regular, on market accessible microfiller on other side. The overall study contain comparison of regular PP as basic, reference property in comparison with regular mineral fillers with/without technology processing and microfillers. All these data provide necessary and proper procedure path for the polymer product designer to conduct rational and reliable polymer material selection during polymer product development.