ABSTRACT
This review presents fundamental knowledge and recent advances pertaining to research on the role of rheology in polymer processing, highlights the knowledge gap between the function of rheology in various processing operations and the importance of rheology in the development, characterization, and assessment of the morphologies of polymeric materials, and offers ideas for enhancing the processabilities of polymeric materials in advanced processing operations. Rheology plays a crucial role in the morphological evolution of polymer blends and composites, influencing the type of morphology in the case of blends and the quality of dispersion in the cases of both blends and composites. The rheological characteristics of multiphase polymeric materials provide valuable information on the morphologies of these materials, thereby rendering rheology an important tool for morphological assessment. Although rheology extensively affects the processabilities of polymeric materials in all processing operations, this review focuses on the roles of rheology in film blowing, electrospinning, centrifugal jet spinning, and the three-dimensional printing of polymeric materials, which are advanced processing operations that have gained significant research interest. This review offers a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of morphology development and the aforementioned processing techniques; moreover, it covers all vital aspects related to the tailoring of the rheological characteristics of polymeric materials for achieving superior morphologies and high processabilities of these materials in advanced processing operations. Thus, this article provides a direction for future advancements in polymer processing. Furthermore, the superiority of elongational flow over shear flow in enhancing the quality of dispersion in multiphase polymeric materials and the role of extensional rheology in the advanced processing operations of these materials, which have rarely been discussed in previous reviews, have been critically analyzed in this review. In summary, this article offers new insights into the use of rheology in material and product development during advanced polymer-processing operations.
ABSTRACT
The present work is a novel attempt to understand the microstructure of styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS)/polystyrene (PS) blends not only through morphological studies, but also thermal, mechanical and rheological characterizations. SEBS/PS blends containing 10, 30 and 50 wt % PS were processed in a micro-compounder and characterized. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) studies, with selective staining of the PS phase, revealed the presence of PS as nanometer-sized domains, as well as phase-separated micrometer-sized aggregates. Blends with 30 and 50 wt % PS exhibited a fibrillar microstructure, obeying Hirsch's model of short fiber composites. A remarkable increase in glass transition temperature indicated a strong interaction of the fibrils with SEBS. All blends showed two modes of relaxation corresponding to the two phases. A single mode of relaxation of the PS phase has been attributed to combined effects of the partial miscibility of the added PS, along with the interaction of the fibrils with SEBS. The long relaxation time of the elastomeric phase indicated the tendency of these materials to undergo time-dependent shrinkage in secondary processing operations. An increase in PS content resulted in the lowering of the shear viscosity and energy requirement for mixing, indicating the ease of processing.
