Impact specific essential work of fracture of compatibilized polyamide-6 (PA6)/poly(phenylene ether) (PPE) blends

Abstract

The essential work of fracture (EWF) method has aroused great interest and has been used to characterize the fracture toughness for a range of ductile metals, polymers and composites. In the plastics industry, for purposes of practical design and ranking of candidate materials, it is important to evaluate the impact essential work of fracture at high-rate testing of polymers and polymer blends. In this paper, the EWF method has been utilized to determine the high-rate specific essential fracture work, w(e) for elastomer-modified PA6/PPE/SXM (50/50/5) blends by notched Charpy tests. It is found that w(e) increases with testing temperature and elastomer content for a given specimen thickness. Morphologically, there are two failure mechanisms: shear yielding and pullout of second phase dispersed particles. Shear yielding is dominant in ductile fracture, whereas particle pullout is predominant in brittle fracture.