Material Selection

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Material Selection
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Thermoplastic Materials
Available Materials What are the materials that
are available commercially? Material
Properties How can I find the properties of the
materials? Material Selection What are the best
materials for my applications? Material
Identification How can I identify the various
plastics?
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Commercially available materials

• Around 15000 to 16000 available commercial brands
• About 300 to 400 commercial brands are added
  every year
• Different development strategies
• Classification (commodity and engineering
  thermoplastics)

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Commercially available materials

• Major Plastics Group
• Expected knowledge Names, repeating units,
  typical properties, typical applications, brand
  names

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Commercially available materials

• PE (LDPE, HDP, LLDPE, UHMWPE)
• PE copolymers (EVA, EAA, EPM)
• PP, PVC, PS , alloys and blends (HIPS, SAN, ABS)
• polyamides (such as nylon), acetals, (or POM),
  thermoplastic polyesters
• (PET, PBT), PC, Acrylics (PMMA), fluoropolymers
  (PTFE, FEP, PFA),
• polyphenylenes (PPE, PPO, PPS), polysulfones
  (PSU, PES), thermoplastic
• polyimides (PI, PAI, PEI), polyetherketones
  (PEEK, PEK), Cellulosic

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Resources for Finding Materials Properties
Here is a partial list of suggestions to find
properties of plastics WEB resources CAMPUS,
MATWEB, companies web sites CD ROMS/Diskettes
from material suppliers, material resellers
(such as Aldrich) independent material
evaluators, Printed resources Modern Plastics
Encyclopedia, PDL books Experimental work
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Material Selection

• 1. Identify end use/functional requirements,
  include performance issues with normal service,
  potential misuse, storage, shipping, assembly
• 2. Put end use requirements into quantitative
  terms. For example, define tough,
  transparent, ...
• 3. Translate quantitative performance
  requirements into material property values. A
  very difficult thing to do

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Material Selection

• 4. Identify generic material type. Use typical
  data for a material type (e.g. transparent, )
• 5. Select specific material grade. Use the
  information from material suppliers
• 6. Develop a new ideal material (if needed).
  Several of our graduates are material
  development engineers!