Poly(butylene terephthalate)/organoclay nanocomposites prepared by in situ interlayer polymerization and its fiber (II)

Intercalated nanocomposites with poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT) incorporated between the montmorillonite layers were synthesized from dimethyl terephthalate and 1,4-butane diol by using an in situ interlayer polymerization. The PBT nanocomposites were melt-spun at different organoclay contents to produce monofilaments. The samples were characterized by using wide angle X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, thermal analysis, and tensile testing. The extent of the clay layer in the PBT was confirmed by using X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy, and the clay layer was found to be highly dispersed on a nanometer scale. The addition of only a small amount of organoclay was enough to improve the thermo-mechanical properties of the PBT hybrid fibers. The hybrids were extruded with various draw ratios (DRs) to examine the tensile mechanical property of the fibers. At DR=1, the ultimate tensile strength of the hybrid fibers increased with the addition of clay up to a critical content and then decreased. However, the initial modulus monotonically increased with increasing amount of organoclay in the PBT matrix. When the DR was increased from 1 to 6, for example, the strength and the initial modulus values of the hybrids containing 3 wt% organoclay decreased linearly.     

Fat-simulating and accelerating solvents for polyolefins and MWD of solvent extracts of polyethylenes

Migration kinetics of straight-chain oligomers and antioxidants from several polyolefins at different temperatures into various solvents have been studied by radioactive tracer techniques. Anhydrous ethanol appears to be a well suited food-oil or liquid-fat simulant for extracting different types of migrants from polyolefins. Pure and mixed triglycerides are also good oil or fat simulants, but the triglycerides offer no simpler analytical procedures than the use of oil or fat themselves. n-Octanol may also be considered as a reasonable oil or fat simulant; however, its action depends somewhat on the choice of migrants. The accelerating action of n-heptane over that of oil or simulants is quantitatively demonstrated. The accelerating effects are greater for migration systems with lower diffusion coefficients. The diffusion coefficients for migration into n-heptane are about 20 times greater than the diffusion coefficients into ethanol or oil for otherwise identical migration systems yielding diffusion coefficients of about 10^?7 cm²s^?1 into oil or ethanol. For systems yielding diffusion coefficients into oil or ethanol of about 10^?12 cm²s^?1, the corresponding diffusion coefficients into n-heptane are about 1000 times greater. The molecular weight distributions (MWDs) of the n-heptane and ethanol extracts of polyolefins have been analysed. n-Heptane can not only accelerate the migration of the individual migrant but also remove oligomer species that are slightly soluble or present at low levels in the oil or simulant extracts.     

Dependence of properties of liquid crystalline aromatic copolyesters on monomer sequence-copolyesters derived from terephthalic acid, 2,7-naphthalenediol and p-hydroxybenzoic acid

Summary An aromatic copolyester with the ordered sequence of terephthalic acid (TA)-p-hydroxybenzoic acid (HB)-2,7-naphthalenediol (ND)-p-hydroxybenzoic acid (HB) was prepared and its properties were compared with those of the corresponding random copolyester having the same overall monomer composition. Thermal and crystallizing properties of the two polymers are quite different. The former exhibits significantly higher glass transition and melting temperatures than the latter. The former's degree of crystallinity also is much higher than the latter's. Both polymers are thermotropic and form nematic melts.     

Measurement of the rheological properties of polymer melts with annular rheometer

An annular die has been designed having a very thin gap distance between two coaxial cylinders. The die was then used to measure wall normal stresses along the longitudinal direction of polymer melts flowing through the thin annulus. The materials investigated were high-density polyethylene, low-density polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene. Also investigated were blends of polystyrene and polypropylene, and blends of polystyrene and high-density polyethylene The measurements of wall normal stresses were used to determine the rheological properties of the melts, namely, the melt viscosity from the slope of axial wall normal stress profiles and the melt elasticity from exit pressures. The interpretation of the experimental data was made possible by the fact that the narrow-gap annular die can be considered as a substitute for a thin slit die. It has been found that the results obtained in the present study are consistent with those reported earlier by the author, who at that time used both capillary and slit dies.     

Collaborative representation with reduced residual for face recognition

Collaboration representation-based classification (CRC) was proposed as an alternative approach to the sparse representation method with similar efficiency. The CRC is essentially a competition scheme for the training samples to compete with each other in representing the test sample, and the training class with the minimum representation residual from the test sample wins the competition in the classification. However, the representation error is usually calculated based on the Euclidean distance between a test sample and the weighted sum of all the same-class samples. This paper exploits alternative methods of calculating the representation error in the CRC methods to reduce the representation residual in a more optimal way, so that the sample classes compete with each other in a closer range to represent the test sample. A large number of face recognition experiments on three face image databases show that the CRC methods with optimized presentation residual achieve better performance than the original CRC, and the maximum improvement in classification accuracy is up to 12 %.     

Rheological properties of mixtures of molten polymer and fluorocarbon blowing agent. I. Mixtures of low-density polyethylene and fluorocarbon blowing agent

The viscosities of mixtures of low-density polyethylene and fluorocarbon blowing agent were determined from the measurement of wall normal stress along the longitudinal axis of a capillary die. For the study, three different grades of commercial high-pressure low-density polyethylene were used, together with the following fluorocarbon blowing agents, dichlorodifluoromethane (FC-12), dichlorotetrafluoroethane (FC-114), and blends of FC-12 and FC-114. In the experiment, blowing agent concentration and melt temperature were varied for each combination of polymer and blowing agent employed. Analysis of the experimental data has led to a correlation between the viscosity reduction factor (VRF) and the blowing agent concentration, in which VRF is defined as the ratio of the viscosity of polymer-blowing agent mixture to that of the polymer alone. It was found that the correlation obtained is independent of shear rate and temperature and dependent upon only the type of fluorocarbon blowing agent. The practical significance of the correlation is discussed. We have shown that the entrance pressure drop obtained in the absence of phase separation in the entrance region may be used as a measure of the elastic properties of mixtures of fluorocarbon blowing agent and low-density polyethylene resin.     

Synthesis and self-assembly of hyperbranched polyester peripherally modified by touluene-4-sulfonyl groups

In this paper, hyperbranched polyesters (HPs) were synthesized in the molten state from 2,2-bis(hydroxymethyl) propionic acid (bis-MPA) and 2-ethyl-2-hydroxymethyl-1,3-propanediol (TMP) using acid catalysis. The modified hyperbranched polyesters were obtained through the chemical modification of the hyperbranched polyester cores by substituting a controlled fraction of the terminal hydroxyl groups with touluene-4-sulfonyl chloride using triethylamine (TEA) as an acceptor of HCl. The resultant polyesters were characterized by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, FT-IR, UV and GPC and their self-assembly behaviors were investigated. The results revealed that self-assembled structures could be formed in selected solvents (trichloromethane/acetone or trichloromethane/n-hexane).     

A generalized method for correcting instrument spreading in gel permeation chromatography

A general method of chromatogram correction for skewed instrument spreading in gel permeation chromatography is presented. The correction method is so general that there is no restriction on the shape of the spreading function. It admits nonsymmetric, non-Gaussian as well as nonconvolution type. Aspects of solution techniques are discussed and an illustrative example is given to elucidate the method.     

Studies on multilayer film coextrusion III. The rheology of blown film coextrusion

Multilayer blown film coextrusion was studied, both experimentally and theoretically. For the experimental study, an annular die with a feed-port system was designed and multilayer blown films were produced by rotating the inner mandrel with a one horsepower variable-speed drive at speeds from nearly 2 to 6 rpm, and by inflating the tubular molten film with air. The die has 16 feed slots and melt pressure transducers are mounted along the axial direction of the outer wall of the annular flow channel. The transducers were used to determine the pressure gradient in the annular flow channel, which then permitted determination of the reduction in pressure drop when different combinations of two polymer systems were coextruded. Polymers used for b own film coextrusion were: (1) low-density polyethylene with ethylene-vinyl acetate; (2) low-density polyethylene with high-density polyethylene; (3) low-density polyethylene with polypropylene; (4) high-density polyethylene with ethylene-vinyl acetate. For the theoretical study, stratified helical flow was analyzed using a power-law non-Newtonian model. A computational procedure was developed to predict the number of layers, layer thickness, and the volumetric flow rate as functions of certain processing variables (namely, the pressure drop in the die, and the angular speed of rotation of the inner mandrel of the die) and the rheological parameters of the individual polymers concerned. Comparison was made of the theoretical prediction of volumetric flow rate with experimental ones. Some representative results are presented of the theoretically predicted axial and angular velocity distributions, shear stress profiles, and shear rate profiles.