Foam injection molding uses environmental friendly blowing agents under high pressure and temperature to produce parts having a cellular core and a compact solid skin (the so-called "structural foam"). The addition of a supercritical gas reduces the part weight and at the same time improves some physical properties of the material through the promotion of a faster crystallization; it also leads to the reduction of both the viscosity and the glass transition temperature of the polymer melt, which therefore can be injection molded adopting lower temperatures and pressures. These aspects are of extreme interest for biodegradable polymers, which often present a very narrow processing window, with the suitable processing temperatures close to the degradation conditions. In this work, foam injection molding was carried out by an instrumented molding machine, able to measure the pressure evolution in different positions along the flow-path. The material adopted was a biodegradable polymer, namely the Poly(lactic acid), PLA. The effect of a physical blowing agent (PBA) on the viscosity was measured. The density reduction and the morphology of parts obtained by different molding conditions was assessed.
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15 May 2014
PROCEEDINGS OF PPS-29: The 29th International Conference of the Polymer Processing Society - Conference Papers
15–19 July 2013
Nuremberg, Germany
Research Article|
May 15 2014
Foam injection molding of poly(lactic acid) with physical blowing agents
R. Pantani;
R. Pantani
Dip. di Ingegneria Chimica e Alimentare, University of Salerno,
Italy
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A. Sorrentino;
A. Sorrentino
CNR, Institute for Composite and Biomedical Materials (IMCB),
Italy
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V. Volpe;
V. Volpe
Dip. di Ingegneria Chimica e Alimentare, University of Salerno,
Italy
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G. Titomanlio
G. Titomanlio
Dip. di Ingegneria Chimica e Alimentare, University of Salerno,
Italy
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AIP Conf. Proc. 1593, 397–400 (2014)
Citation
R. Pantani, A. Sorrentino, V. Volpe, G. Titomanlio; Foam injection molding of poly(lactic acid) with physical blowing agents. AIP Conf. Proc. 15 May 2014; 1593 (1): 397–400. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4873808
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