ORIENTATION, STRESS AND SHRINKAGE RELATIONSHIPS FOR AMORPHOUS AND SEMICRYSTALLINE POLYMERS

摘要

The dimensional stability, such as shrinkage strain or stress, of oriented films and sheets is an important factor in the application of these articles. High shrinkage may be desired for some applications or need to be minimized for others. Thus shrinkage control and monitoring is of paramount importance. On the other hand, it is well established for most polymer melts that the birefringence is simply related to the stress through the stress optical rule, and simple theories relate the stress and birefringence to the strain. In this paper, we investigate these relationships for oriented amorphous (polystyrene, PS) and semi-crystalline polymers (PE, PET, and sPS) in relation with their shrinkage stress and/or strain. For low orientations, it is found that the stress and strain can be simply related to birefringence. For semicrystalline polymers, the relationship is more complex. At high degrees of orientation, some modifications to the theories are required.