International Plastics Handbook

The word plastics has been deeply ingrained into our society and culture, to the point that many consider this the age of plastics. The word itself applies to materials that can be shaped and formed, however, today we use it to describe a polymer which contains additives, such as pigments, fillers, antioxidants, and UV-protectors, to name a few. Polymers are materials composed of molecules of high molecular weight. The unique material properties of plastics and versatile processing methods are attributed to their molecular structure. The ease with which polymers are processed and with which one can consolidate several parts into a single part, as well as their high strength - to - weight ratio, make them the most sought after materials today.

This chapter is intended to give the reader a general overviewof polymermaterials science. It presents the general chemistry, structure and morphology of polymers as well as common modifications done on polymeric materials to enhance their properties. At the end of the chapter the topic of recycling is briefly discussed.

This chapter presents the basic properties of interest to the engineer, and the testing techniques used to measure them. Furthermore, each set of properties is presented with sets of graphs that illustrate how various conditions affect it. Additionally, the graphs compare the most important plastics to each other, and often to other materials such as steel, wood, glass, etc.

Manufacturing of plastic parts can involve one or several of the following steps:

When designing a product we must consider the interaction of three major components: material, design and manufacturing. Material and its selection is often the most involved, complex, and certainly most costly aspect of product design, which often requires development, testing and evaluation. Material - dependent design aspects must include non-linearities caused by temperature effects, time and aging. The design of the product requires drawings or CAD models, calculations, prototypes and experience.

In this chapter, in order to compare the different types of plastics material, material properties according to standards adopted by material data banks such as CAMPUS will be used (see Table 6.1). The number of properties used will be limited to enhance the clarity and comparativeness of the information.