Quantitative analysis of surface irregularities resulting from flow-induced separation of highly filled compounds

Abstract

During shear flow of highly filled (about 60 vol.% powder particles) polymer melts the occurring separation of particular material components has a detrimental effect on the surface quality of the resulting parts. Currently, there is a lack of reliable simulation approaches available to optimize the processing of such rheologically complex materials as well as tools describing separation in a quantitative way. The aim of the current research is to provide an approach to analyze this phenomenon quantitatively, and compare tendency to separation as a function of material composition and/or processing parameters. In this paper, surface quality of the resulting parts is determined with a contactless scanner with a First Interface Detection testing mode in order to obtain fractal dimensions of reject/fine surface structure of the final products.