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Polystyrene microcellular plastic generation by quick‐heating process at high temperature
Author(s) -
Sunada Tomoko,
Sato Yoshiyuki,
Takishima Shigeki,
Masuoka Hirokatsu
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
polymer engineering and science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.503
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1548-2634
pISSN - 0032-3888
DOI - 10.1002/pen.11280
Subject(s) - materials science , polystyrene , supersaturation , saturation (graph theory) , expansion ratio , composite material , nitrogen , volume (thermodynamics) , liquid nitrogen , solubility , polymer , analytical chemistry (journal) , thermodynamics , chromatography , chemistry , physics , mathematics , organic chemistry , combinatorics
Generation of microcellular plastic in the polystyrene‐nitrogen system was studied in a batch process. In this study, a quick‐heating method was applied to study the effects of saturation temperature, decompression rate and heating time on the microcellular structure for sheet samples with a thickness of 1.3 mm. The saturation pressure in each process was kept constant at 25 MPa. At saturation temperatures above 393 K, we found that, although the solubility of nitrogen increased with increasing saturation temperature, cell density decreased, and the average cell diameter and volume expansion ratio increased. The samples that were saturated at 433 K shattered after microcellular processing. The change in decompression rate affected the supersaturation degree of the dissolved gas in the polymer, and affected the cell structure. Variation of heating time for difference saturation/heating temperature could be used to obtain the optimum relation between cell density, average cell diameter, and volume expansion ratio.