Plastic Part Properties and their Relationship to End-Use Performance

Abstract

Use of plastic materials by the appliance industry would be severely limited without simulated service tests. This application demands that the prediction of long-term behavior of plastic materials in finished parts under end-use conditions. Our knowledge of these materials is not yet sufficient to characterize quantitatively the complex interactions of their time-dependent response to stress or strain with (1) the effect of geometry, (2) the chemical and mechanical influence of environments, and (3) the striking changes in polymer morphology produced by processing techniques. This paper discusses some of these factors and illustrates their application to simulated service testing for prediction of finished part performance.