Rheology of Highly Filled Polymers

Document Type : compile

Authors

Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute

Abstract

T his paper reviews current knowledge about the rheology of highly filled polymers,
focusing on hard fillers. Understanding the rheological properties would help for
assist the formulation and processing of such polymeric materials. When solid particles are
incorporated in a fluid, they affect the rheological behavior of the system via changes in the
flow field. Nowadays rheology of suspensions, especially concentrated suspensions, is of
great importance due to their wide uses in various fields such as composite, petrochemical,
and food industries. The main factors affecting the rheological behavior of these composites
such as maximum packing fraction, percolation threshold, and the size distribution of the
fillers are discussed. The size distribution of the fillers facilitates higher filling levels and
decreases the melt mixture viscosity for a specified content of fillers. The limitations and
flow instabilities of highly filled polymers often lead to non-linear rheological behavior
such as wall slip, polymer-filler separation, swelling and surface instabilities phenomena.
Following, mathematical models predicting the maximum packing fraction, which is one
of the most important rheological parameters of highly filled composites, is presented.
The viscosity-containing also discussed as a function of the filler content for monomodal,
bimodal, and multimodal highly filled suspensions.

Keywords


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