Huagui Zhang

A nonlinear shear and elongation rheological study of interfacial failure in compatible bilayer systems

This work aims to examine whether or not interfacial failure can occur in a compatible polymer bilayer system under large shear and elongation deformations, as well as to probe the sensitivity of nonlinear transient rheology to the presence of interface/interphase at neighboring layers. For this, stress relaxation after a step strain and fast startup in simple shear and uniaxial extension experiments have been performed on healed and coextruded poly(methyl methacrylate)/poly(vinylidene fluoride) bilayers with the presence of a robust diffuse interphase as evaluated by energy dispersive X ray. For unhealed bilayers, interfacial failure occurred in shear flows at intermediate deformations, while for healed bilayers the interphase greatly delayed the onset of interfacial failure to larger deformation steps and to a higher deformation rate in the startup shear. Extensional rheology demonstrated that the presence of an interphase in the bilayers greatly enhanced the transient extensional viscosity ηE+(t) as we...

Experimental considerations on the step shear strain in polymer melts: sources of error and windows of confidence

Shear step strain experiments with various strain amplitudes have been performed on poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) melts using both stress-controlled and strain-controlled rheometers. Firstly, the onset of the rheological nonlinearity, i.e., nonlinear stress damping behavior, occurring after a large step strain is found to be a phenomenological consequence of an abrupt stress decline within the transient period of strain actuation. Such a feature, analogous to the stress overshoot in a fast startup shear with sufficiently high rates, is interpreted based on theoretical frameworks concerning chain disentanglement/re-entanglement arising from chain retraction. Furthermore, this work infers that full technical considerations in step strain experiments are indispensable for acquisition of accurate stress relaxation data, as some common but easily overlooked technical problems are influential, probably introducing errors. For instance, a too long finite rise time and a stress overload enable to hinder the nonlinearity onset in the transient period, resulting in inaccurate experimental data. In this sense, the stress-controlled rheometer is advantageous relative to the strain-controlled one, although the inertia in the stress-controlled mode incurs a strain overshoot effect. Nevertheless, the amplitude-dependent strain overshoot offers a very subtle effect on the stress damping behavior. Moreover, transducer compliance problems need to be taken into account, especially for high stiffness polymers. Overall, the effects of such technical factors are dictated by their ability to influence the chain stretching/retraction and the disentanglement. A well-considered experimental methodology is necessary to achieve confidence windows in step strain experiments for analysis accuracy.

Fundamental studies of interfacial rheology at multilayered model polymers for coextrusion process

Fundamental studies have been devoted to the interfacial phenomena at multilayered systems based on two model compatible polymers of PVDF and PMMA with varying molar masses. Linear and nonlinear rheology are demonstrated to be sensitive to the presence of diffuse interphase triggered at polymer/polymer interface. Firstly, the interdiffusion kinetics as well as the interphase development have been investigated using SAOS measurements with results analyzed under Doi-Edwards theory. The PMMA/PVDF mixture, has been examined to own close component monomeric friction coefficients. Based on this physics, a new rheological model was developed to quantify the interdiffusion coefficients. Thereby, rheological and geometrical properties of the interphase have been quantified, as validated by SEM-EDX. Secondly, step strain, shear and uniaxial extension startup were carried out to investigate their sensitivity to the diffuse interphase. An original model was proposed for the stress relaxation of multilayer and that of...