Book Review: Rheology of Filled Polymer Systems
The science of rheology is the study of the flow and deformation of matter. An understanding of rheology is important in the processing of composites, whether the task is designing an injection molded part or determining the cure cycle for a prepreg.
Rheology of Filled Polymer Systems will be of most interest to those involved in injection molding and similar processes. Manufacturers of continuous fiber composites would be better served by a book targeted to their industry.
But if you are interested in molding processes, and especially in the theoretical background, then this book is for you.
The book starts with introductory chapters on polymers, rheology, rheometry (measurement techniques), and compounding equipment. Although these chapters start with the basics, they are more of a review than an introduction to the subjects. To get full use of this book, you should first have some background in these topic areas.
Fortunately, Rheology tells you where to find that background information. Each chapter lists over 100 citations, and the text points to those which are standard references. For example, the first chapter on polymers provides 13 suggestions for further introductory reading (one of which was my college polymers text).
The main feature which distinguishes this book from others on polymer rheology is its focus on filled systems. The addition of fillers (particles, fibers, flakes, etc.) makes such systems behave much differently than unfilled polymers.
The theoretical basis for these differences are described early in the book, but the later chapters make extensive use of empirical data to make the differences clear.
Shear viscous, shear elastic, shear viscoelastic, and extensional properties are each covered in their own chapter. For each topic, the effects of filler type, size, concentration, and other characteristics are shown. Of course, the properties of the polymer matrix also has an impact on the system rheologies, and these effects are also covered.
These later chapters make for fairly dense reading. It's not the fault of the author--the writing is quite good--it's just that there's a lot of material to cover. Shenoy does a good job of presenting data for a variety of systems, explaining the trends intuitively, and then showing how it all fits in with the theories developed earlier in the book.
As someone who doesn't work with molded plastics (filled or unfilled), I found the sections on non-Newtonian flow behavior and compounding equipment to be the most interesting. In the former case, the clear descriptions of basic principles, along with pictures of the weird effects viscoelastic behavior can cause, appealed to my thirst for general knowledge.
In the latter case, I got to see the internal workings of mixing equipment. Thanks to clear explanations of how the polymer systems interact with the machines, it's easier to relate the later discussions on filler effects to real-world processing problems.
Details: Rheology of Filled Polymer Systems, by
Aroon V. Shenoy,
published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999, ISBN
0-412-83100-7.
1. Introduction; 2. Basic rheological concepts; 3. Rheometry;
4. Constitutive theories and equations for suspensions; 5. Preparation
of filled polymer systems; 6. Steady shear viscous properties;
7. Steady shear elastic properties; 8. Unsteady shear viscoelastic
properties; 9. Extensional flow properties; 10. Concluding remarks;
A. Glossary; B. ASTM conditions and specifications for MFI; C. Data
details and sources for master rheograms