INFLUENCE OF MORPHOLOGY ON THE FRACTURE-TOUGHNESS OF ISOTACTIC POLYPROPYLENE

An adaptation of the fracture toughness test method, the J-integral technique, is described within the general framework of polymer fracture behavior. It is shown that there is a strong interaction between different morphological parameters in the way they affect the fracture behavior of isotactic polypropylene (iPP). The fracture toughness decreases with increasing crystallinity at a fixed spherulite size. The fracture toughness also decreases slightly with increasing spherulite size at a constant crystallinity, but this may not be a pure spherulite size effect. The use of a nucleating agent results in a very fine spherulitic structure but facilitates crack growth and reduces the material toughness beyond the crack initiation stage. This suggests that the material behavior is dictated by the increase in crystallization temperature caused by the presence of the nucleating agent and not by the change in spherulite size. (C) 1995 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.