Investigations of environmental stress cracking resistance of HDPE/EVA and LDPE/EVA blends

HDPE/poly(ethylene‐co‐vinylacetate) (EVA) and low‐density polyethylene (LDPE)/EVA blends were tested and compared with respect to their environmental stress cracking resistance (ESCR) using the Bell‐telephone test. The time to failure in the ESCR test improves with increasing EVA content, and considerable improvements were produced for LDPE/EVA blends while small improvements were observed for HDPE/EVA blends. Thermal, rheological, mechanical, and morphological studies were conducted which established a quantitative relationship between morphological features and composition. Furthermore, the failed specimens were further characterized by scanning electron microscopy and fractographic methodology to investigate the failure mechanism for ESCR samples. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 39880.