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Comparative Investigation on Step-cycle Tensile Behaviors of Two Bimodal Pipe-grade Polyethylene with Different Slow Crack Growth Resistance

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Abstract

In this work, step-cycle tensile behavior of two bimodal polyethylene (PE) materials, a PE100 grade pipe material, XS10, and a PE100-RC (Resistant Crack) grade pipe material, XSC50, was comparatively investigated. By decomposing the strain into a recoverable part and an unrecoverable part, it was found that the deformation recovery capability of XSC50 during stretching was larger than that of XS10. Structural evolution characterized by in situ synchrotron small angle X-ray scattering indicated that the fragmentation of initial crystals in XSC50 occurred at lower strain than in XS10. Considering that XSC50 had relatively small lamellar thickness and similar crystallinity to XS10, we speculated that the larger deformation recovery capability of XSC50 during stretching probably derived from stronger entangled amorphous region caused by larger density of tie molecules and entanglements, which were usually regarded to have a significant influence on the slow crack growth (SCG) resistance of PE materials. As expected, the experimental result of strain hardening modulus test suggested that the deformation recovery capability during stretching was positively correlated with the SCG resistance for XS10 and XSC50 used in this work. The step-cycle tensile test had the potential to be developed into a supplement for comparison of SCG resistance of PE materials.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51773040 and 21574029) and PetroChina Company Limited, China. We also greatly thank for the beam time provided by Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Yan-Qin Huang, Qing-Long Zhang & Jia-Chun Feng

  2. Laboratory for Synthetic Resin Research, PetroChina Petrochemical Research Institute, Beijing, 100083, China

    Xiao-Ying Lu

  3. Institute of Dushanzi Petrochemical Corporation, PetroChina Company Limited, Dushanzi, 833699, China

    Yi-Bin Gong & Hao Zhou

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  1. Yan-Qin Huang
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Correspondence to Jia-Chun Feng.

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Comparative Investigation on Step-cycle Tensile Behaviors of Two Bimodal Pipe-grade Polyethylene with Different Slow Crack Growth Resistance

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Huang, YQ., Zhang, QL., Lu, XY. et al. Comparative Investigation on Step-cycle Tensile Behaviors of Two Bimodal Pipe-grade Polyethylene with Different Slow Crack Growth Resistance. Chin J Polym Sci 38, 611–619 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-020-2364-3

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