Essential work of fracture study on thermoplastic polyolefin filled with silicon carbide nanoparticles
AbstractThermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) containing 70 wt% polypropylene and 30 wt% styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene grafted maleic anhydride and its nanocomposites filled with 1-5wt% silicon carbide nanoparticles (SiCp) were prepared by melt processing followed by injection molding. Tensile tests show that both Young’s modulus and tensile strength increase with increasing SiCp loading. Essential work of fracture (EWF) method was used to evaluate the fracture toughness of resulting nanocomposites. EWF test demonstrates that the fracture toughness of TPO blend generally decreases with increasing SiCp content. Shield yielding and fibrillation are the main fracture mechanisms for TPO blend and composites. SiCp are found to improve the heat deflection temperature of the TPO blend.