Capillary flow of sodium and zinc ionomers

The capillary flow properties of several commercial ionomers (sodium and zinc) were studied to assess their processability in terms of instabilities such as wall slip and melt fracture. Using capillary dies of various diameters and lengths to control capillary extrusion pressure, it was found that the viscosity of these polymers exhibits a relatively small dependence on pressure, more importantly at relatively smaller pressures. Using capillaries of various diameters at fixed length-to-diameter ratios, it was also found that the no-slip boundary condition is a valid assumption for these polymers due to the strong ionic associations and strong interactions with the capillary wall. All ionomers were found to exhibit gross melt fracture (no sharkskin), a phenomenon more dominantly observed at lower temperatures. The occurrence of gross melt fracture and the absence of surface (sharkskin) melt fracture is a characteristic of extensional strain-hardening polymers, noting that all ionomers examined exhibit this phenomenon. The critical shear stress for the onset of gross melt fracture was found to depend on the lifetime of associations, tau(S) (tau S proportional to ZE/ZS21/5, where Z(E) is the number of entanglements and Z(S) is the number of associations), independent of temperature, molecular weight, and type of ion (zinc or sodium). Published under license by AIP Publishing.