Développement d'un nanocomposite constitué de polyéthylène linéaire à basse densité (LLDPE) et d'argile: paramètres de fabrication et propriétés mécaniques en traction

Abstract

It has been known that the tensile properties of thermoplastic reinforced with nanoclay depend on the good qualities such as exfoliation and dispersion of the material structure on a nanoscale. All the melt compounding parameters effects should be investigated to produce a polyolefin nanocomposite a more efficient matrix. This study aimed to investigate the influence of different production parameters by analyzing the tensile properties of nanocomposites composed of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) / clay. Using a co-rotating twin screw extruder with a variable speed external feeder, the following parameters were observed: clay and coupling agent content, rotational speed, throughput rate and melt temperature. By performing tensile tests following the ASTM D-638 and XRD analysis, the optimal conditions offering a good balance between shear stress and intercalation of montmorillonite platelet were determined. At an extrusion speed of 150 rpm, a melt temperature of 170 ° C, a throughput rate of 1.2 kg/h, a Fusabond ® M603 content of 2 wt% and a clay concentration of 3 wt%, all tensile properties has been increased. For a relatively low density variation, increases of 11.5, 7.4, 37.5 and 14.6% were observed for the ultimate stress, elongation at break, tensile and tensile modulus respectively. On other hand, high clay content led to a more rigid nanocomposite. As an important fact, the rigidity of the nanocomposites increases linearly with clay content. Increase of 135% for a clay loading of 16 wt% were observed.

Date	10 Nov 2011
Original language	French
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Anh Dung Ngô (Supervisor) & Trek Sean (Co-supervisor)