Ageing and durability of polymers for industrial use
■ The life span of polymers is putting a brake on their development due to the most used families having a limited resistance to ageing, lack of industrial players’ knowledge of the problems and an accidental failure rate that is too high.
Although it is difficult to make an assessment, published statistics concerning failure of polymer parts involve ageing in over 60% of cases. Inappropriate chemical resistance comes top of the list, followed by thermal resistance, resistance to climate conditions and dynamic fatigue. Statistically speaking, none of the causes of ageing has an insignificant effect on the frequency of anomalies and failures.
The multiplicity of causes makes it difficult to analyse the problem; the chemical and physical degradation processes are many; phenomena vary with the type of degradation and the family of polymers; the different parameters that govern degradation are difficult to grasp in practice and often poorly defined and variable. All of these elements are analysed systematically after an analysis of the economic importance of “normal” or faulty durability. The particularities of polymers, whose behaviour is fundamentally different to that of metals, factors that boost degradation linked to the polymer or the part, degradation methods and the role of different aggressive factors are covered point by point.
Scenarii and the consequences of the absorption and desorption of liquids and gases are then developed, along with thermo-degradation in the absence of oxygen, thermo-oxidation, hydrolytic action, weathering, fatigue under static and dynamic constraints, resistance in a chemical environment, radiolysis and biodegradation.
- Publication: January 2001
- ISBN: 2-906024-42-2
- Price for single work station: 350 euros, ex. tax
- Price for several work stations: 950 euros, ex. tax
