Description of PVT behavior of an industrial polypropylene-EPR copolymer in process conditions

An experimental procedure is presented to describe the PVT behavior of multiphase polymeric materials in a wide range of cooling rates. In particular, the procedure is applied to a typical multiphase industrial polymer, that is, an industrial polypropylene- ethylene-propylene rubber (iPP-EPR) copolymer with a small percentage of talc. The volume evolution is described combining specific volumes of different phases present in the material. All phases are described simply by thermal expansion and compressibility coefficients drawn either from the literature or from low and high temperature (i.e., below and above the iPP crystallization range) standard PVT data. Crystallization evolution of iPP is described by the Nakamura nonisothermal formulation of the Avrami-Evans crystallization kinetic model. Model parameters are identified by comparison with both standard calorimetric results and final densities of thin samples solidified during quenches conducted with cooling rates of several hundreds of K/s. It is also shown that identification of crystallization kinetic parameters by means of calorimetric data only leads to misleading results for cooling rates larger than those adopted in the calorimetric tests. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.