Process induced morphology development of isotactic polypropylene on the basis of molecular stretch and mechanical work evolutions

It is well known that under high shear rates polymers tend to solidify with formation of morphological elements oriented and aligned along the flow direction. On the other hand, stretched polymer chains may not have sufficient time to undergo the structuring steps, which give rise to fibrillar morphology. In the last decades, several authors have proposed a combined criterion based on both a critical shear rate and a critical mechanical work, which guaranties adequate time for molecular structuring. In this paper, the criterion, reformulated on the basis of critical values of both molecular stretch and mechanical work and adjusted to account for the unsteady character of the polymer processing operations, is applied to the analysis of a set of isotactic polypropylene injection molded samples obtained under very different thermal boundary conditions. The evolutions of molecular stretch and mechanical work are evaluated using process simulation. The results of the model reproduce the main characteristics of the morphology distribution detected on the cross sections of moldings, obtained under very different thermal boundary conditions, assuming that the critical work is a function of temperature.