A Review of the Mechanical and Physical Properties of Polyethylene Fibers

Abstract

Since the 1970s and 1980s, a major effort has been made to study UHMWPE (Ultra-High Molecular Weight PolyEthylene) fibers with remarkable mechanical properties, based on a basic polymer such as PE (PolyEthylene). These performances are above all associated with a very strong alignment of the molecules and the microfibrillar structures formed using various processes. However, they vary greatly depending on many parameters, and particularly on the draw ratio. Thus, these characteristics have been extensively analyzed by dynamic, static tensile, and creep tests, and are predominantly viscoelastic. The behavior appears to be associated with physical considerations and with the characteristic orthorhombic-hexagonal solid phase transition. The presence of a hexagonal phase is detrimental to the behavior because the chains slide easily relative to each other. Shifting this transition to higher temperatures is a challenge and many factors influence it and the temperature at which it takes place, such as the application of stress or annealing. The objective here is to give an overview of what has been done so far to understand the behavior of UHMWPE yarns. This is important given future numerical modeling work on the dimensioning of structural parts in which these UHMWPE yarns will be reinforcements within composites.

Influence of fatigue stress on the radial strength of polymeric braided vascular stents

“…In that process, the filament undergoes a combination of flexion and torsion. The material being a viscoelastic polymer characterized by already highly oriented amorphous zones in its drawn filament configuration, one expects that this deformation will be the combination of elastic strain combined with hysteresis 26–29 . However, the amplitude of the deformation undergone by the material itself over the 20% radial stent compression remains in the Hookean region (around 2%).…”

“…Effects of manufacturing parameters on (A, B) radial strength loss and (C, D) dissipated energy after 20 and 100 K cycles of fatigue hysteresis. [26][27][28][29] However, the amplitude of the deformation undergone by the material itself over the 20% radial stent compression remains in the Hookean region (around 2%). The energy dissipated in the hysteresis cycles can thus be expected to not heat the fiber as far as to degrade the molecular chains.…”

Regulating the dissolving system of ultra‐high molecular weight polyethylene to enhance the high‐strength and high‐modulus properties of resultant fibers

“…Ultra‐high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibers are a kind of high‐performance fibers with the highest specific strength and modulus in the world at present, which are prepared from polyethylene with molecular weight more than 1.5 million using gel‐spinning and hot‐drawing 1–3 . UHMWPE fibers are of great importance to mankind because of their increasing demand in fields ranging from civil materials to basic materials for military aviation depending on their simple structure, low density, outstanding tensile property, excellent wear resistance and other properties 4–8 . The methods for preparing UHMWPE fibers mainly include solid‐phase extrusion method, 9,10 surface crystal growth method, 11 plasticized melt‐spinning method 12,13 and gel‐spinning‐hot‐drawing method 14,15 and so forth.…”

“…[1][2][3] UHMWPE fibers are of great importance to mankind because of their increasing demand in fields ranging from civil materials to basic materials for military aviation depending on their simple structure, low density, outstanding tensile property, excellent wear resistance and other properties. [4][5][6][7][8] The methods for preparing UHMWPE fibers mainly include solid-phase extrusion method, 9,10 surface crystal growth method, 11 plasticized melt-spinning method 12,13 and gelspinning-hot-drawing method 14,15 and so forth. But compared with other preparation methods, the gel-spinninghot-drawing method has many merits, such as excellent properties of prepared fibers, easy control of spinning process and so on.…”

Positioning of a self-reinforced polyethylene in the industrial composites market

“…However, to our knowledge, the comparison of the potential of SRPEs has not been addressed in the literature. Nevertheless, due to the remarkable properties of UHMWPE fibers [17], it would be interesting to evaluate them by imposing the same reinforcement mass, for example.…”