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Stress relaxation of a polycarbonate blend after hygrothermal aging

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Abstract

This work has studied the competing effects of physical aging and moisture absorption on the relaxation behaviour of a polycarbonate/acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (PC/ABS) polymer blend after being subjected to both thermal and hygrothermal aging. Physical aging was simulated by thermal aging the blend at temperatures up to 80 ∘C which is below the glass transition temperatures of ABS and PC in the blend, respectively. Nine different combinations of relative humidity and temperature were investigated for hygrothermal aging. In both cases, two sets of aging times were applied: “short” term (≤16 hour aging) and “long” term (@168 hour aging). The short term tests were used to generate momentary master curves by applying time/aging-time and time/moisture superposition principles. Using the Kohlrausch–Williams–Watts (KWW) expression, the model parameters determined from curve fitting master curves were used to predict longer term stress relaxation behaviour. The predictions, verified against experimental results, showed reasonable agreement for all hygothermal exposure conditions except for full immersion. Moreover, comparisons of KWW parameters for both short and long term tests suggested that physical aging processes dominate absorbed moisture effects in terms of influencing viscoelastic behaviour, especially when the aging temperature approaches 80 ∘C.

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Abbreviations

E :

modulus

E o :

initial modulus

T :

temperature

T a :

aging temperature

T g :

glass transition temperature

a H :

hygrothermal horizontal shift factor

a ta :

thermal horizontal shift factor

a v :

vertical shift factor

m :

moisture uptake

m d :

mass of dry sample

m w :

mass of wet sample

t :

time

t a :

aging time

\(t_{\mathrm{a}}^{o}\) :

aging time before stress relaxation period

β :

shape parameter

tanδ :

ratio of storage modulus to loss modulus

λ :

effective time

μ H :

hygrothermal shift rate

μ ta :

thermal shift rate

τ :

relaxation time constant

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Materials Laboratory at Research in Motion (RIM), Waterloo, Ontario for providing materials and technical support over the past three years. Funding from RIM and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Research and Development Collaborative Research Grant program for this work is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1

    Mojtaba Haghighi-Yazdi & Pearl Lee-Sullivan

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  1. Mojtaba Haghighi-Yazdi
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  2. Pearl Lee-Sullivan
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Correspondence to Pearl Lee-Sullivan.

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Haghighi-Yazdi, M., Lee-Sullivan, P. Stress relaxation of a polycarbonate blend after hygrothermal aging. Mech Time-Depend Mater 17, 171–193 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11043-012-9177-x

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