Investigation of the thermal ageing of polyethylene and polystyrene with the purpose of predicting their shelf‐life

Abstract

The aim of the present work is to predict the warehouse storage life of polyethylene low-density, polyethylene high-density and polystyrene impact-resistent, using the method of temperature-time superposition. The properties, most representative for thermal ageing, are the relative elongation at break for polyethylene and the impact resistance for polystyrene. The validity of the predicted shelf-life is verified by estimating the change of these properties under real conditions of warehouse storage.