Fracture Behavior of Recycled Blends Based on PC, ABS and PMMA

摘要

Mechanical recycling of multi-component products is a point of interest for car rear lightsrnproducers. Rear lights are a source of high quality engineering thermoplastics. However, theirrnrecycling has been restricted to separated polymer fractions. This paper investigates possibilitiesrnfor and limits on recycling these parts as a "multi-polymer mixture" by studying model blends ofrnPC/ABS, ABS/PMMA, PC/PMMA and PC/ABS/PMMA. The compositions of the binary modelrnblends were varied. For ternary blends of PC/ABS/PMMA, the blend ratio of PC to ABS wasrnheld constant at an optimum value while the content of PMMA was varied. The PC/ABS blendrnwas found to be strongly dependent on processing parameters. The optimum processingrnconditions were investigated. Instrumented Charpy impact testing was carried out to determinernthe relationship between fracture behavior, blend composition, morphology and processingrnparameters. Resistance to unstable crack propagation was evaluated using concepts of J-integralrnand crack opening displacement (COD). The transition from ductile elasto-plastic behavior tornbrittle linear elastic fracture behavior was observed for the PC/ABS/PMMA blend at 10%rnPMMA.