The determination of the lateral compliances and Poisson's ratios for highly oriented polyethylene sheets

The extensional and lateral compliances have been determined for a series of oriented linear polyethylene sheets. For the measurements the sheet samples were mounted in a dead-loading creep apparatus fitted with a Hall effect lateral extensometer. The results agree well with those obtained previously on similar materials using other techniques. The values of the elastic constants are considered in the light of theoretical estimates based on force constant calculations.