Effects of Stretching Parameters on Morphological and Mechanical Properties of Polytetrafluoroethylene Filaments

Comprehensive performances of polytetrafluoroethylene(PTFE) flat filaments used as suture materials in medical field can be affected significantly by morphological and mechanical characteristics.Due to low tensile strength and non-uniform morphology,PTFE flat filaments cannot be applied widely as medical sutures.In order to solve flaws above,PTFE flat filaments with constant linear density,550 dtex,are manufactured and dependences of morphology,frictional features and mechanical behaviors on stretching ratio and temperature are also analyzed.The results indicate that PTFE flat filaments with high tensile strength(1 922.0 cN) and excellent apparent performance can be manufactured at optimal stretching ratio and temperature,18.0 and350 ℃,respectively.

Distributed Stretching Control of Web Production System

The stretching process,as a key phase of web production system,pursues the target velocities of rollers and the web tensions of spans between the successive rollers to guarantee proper stretching ratios. This requires the stable velocities and velocity ratios of large number rollers separated throughout the workshop. To this goal,a distributed cooperative controller is designed to coordinate the velocities of the rollers to the desired values as well as the target ratios between the upper and lower rollers. During the whole evolution,only the neighbor rollers can exchange the working information,and neither global information nor central controller is required. It is proven that all the rollers asymptotically achieve the desired velocity ratios via the proposed control law,which is also demonstrated by numerical simulation.

Improving the Softness of BOPP Films： From Laboratory Investigation to Industrial Processing

Young＇s modulus of biaxially oriented polypropylene （BOPP） films prepared with homemade film stretcher was investigated, which can be used to indicate the softness of films. It was found that the modulus of films was decreased by about 69% as the content of polyethylene （PE） added into polypropylene （PP） reached 30%. Also, increasing draw temperature can induce lower stress level during stretching, which may lead to the formation of crystals with low orientation level and thus decreased modulus of films. Based on laboratory study, BOPP films produced on commercial line were studied by differential scanning calorimetry （DSC）, wide and small-angle X-ray scattering （WAXS, SAXS） with varying contents of PE. SAXS results show that the crystals are oriented in both machine direction （MD） and transverse direction （TD）, and the crystals are more oriented in TD than MD according to the WAXS results for all films. Also, the orientation parameter of crystal along TD increases from 0.68 to 0.83 as the contents of PE increase from 0% to 25%. Meanwhile, the modulus of films in MD declines with increase of PE contents generally, improving the film softness. Orientation of crystals is thus an effective structure parameter to adjust the film softness. The relationship of processing-structure-property is also established.

A Universal Equipment for Biaxial Stretching of Polymer Films

A biaxial stretching equipment was designed and constructed to enable fundamental studies of the relationship between film processing conditions and structures of oriented film products. With programmable drive motors and scissorlike mechanism, all stretching modes, including uniaxial stretching with constant and free width, simultaneous and sequential biaxial stretching, can be applied to a square-shaped sheet. Parameters related to film stretching manufacturing, such as temperature, draw ratio and stretching speed can be set independently to meet the requirement of different polymers. The force information during stretching is recorded by two miniature tension sensors in two directions independently, which can monitor the mechanical stimulus and stress response. Using this equipment, experiments are conducted to investigate the influence of stretching parameters on the structure of polypropylene films, which provides an effective method to tailor the processing conditions to obtain the films with desired properties.

Stress Transfer in Polymer Nanocomposites:A Coarse-grained Molecular Dynamics Study

In this work,we used coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation methods to investigate the dispersion and percolation behavior of nanoparticles in polymer nanocomposite.Our aim was to investigate the correlation between particle arrangement in nearby layers and the stretching performance in composite systems by exploring the stress transfer processes during different stages of the stretching process.The machine learning technique of linear regression was used to quantitatively measure the efficiency of stress transfer between particles nearby.According to our research,increasing the strength of attraction can significantly enhance the particle dispersion and affect the percolation threshold.We also noticed a non-monotonic relationship between the interaction strength and the tensile stress.Additionally,we quantified the efficiency of nanoparticles and polymers at transferring stress to nearby nanoparticles.As a result,the stress value provided by each particle in the aggregation body is significantly increased by the aggregation behavior of nanoparticles.The non-monotonic behavior is caused by two variables:the rapid disintegration of aggregates and the improved stress transfer efficiency from polymers to nanoparticles.Significantly,it was discovered that the structural rearrangement of nanoparticles during stretching is the main reason that causes the yield-like behavior seen in poorly dispersed systems.