No abstract

No abstract

In this work we propose to model the mechanical and fracture response of semi-crystalline low-density polyethylene (LDPE) films exposed to accelerated ultraviolet (UV) ageing using a physically based viscohyperelastic-viscoplastic approach. UV irradiation induces an alteration of the chemical and structural properties of the semi-crystalline polymer, which affects significantly its mechanical behavior. In this work, pristine and oxidized low-density polyethylene films are characterized by conventional physicochemical and mechanical techniques (FTIR spectroscopy, DSC, HT-GPC, and uniaxial tensile testing). Polyethylene exhibits an oxidation-induced strengthening for a low range of UV radiation doses and a cavitation-induced softening for higher UV radiation doses. A competing multi-scale phenomena induced by UV radiation are incorporated into the constitutive model to capture the macroscopically observed mechanical and fracture behavior. Namely, the model will incorporate at the nano scale, chain scissions and cross-linking and at the meso and macro scales, oxidation-induced cracking, chemi-crystallization, and mechanical damage. The model used the high-temperature gel permeation chromatographymeasured molecular weight as degradation indicator. The model was able to capture accurately the evolution of the macroscopically observed mechanical and fracture behavior over a wide range of UV irradiation doses.

This work investigated the structural and chemical changes of plastics undergoing accelerated ageing upon irradiation that simulated the ultraviolet component of solar radiation for a five-year period. The plastics selected were polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) microplastic debris sampled from a sandy beach as well as pure pellets and fragments of objects made of the same polymers. We recorded Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectra at prescribed intervals during the irradiation procedure. The spectra were used to study the evolution of the absorption peaks usually associated with the environmental ageing of polyolefins, namely the peaks of hydroxyl and carbonyl stretching, the peaks relating to the presence of double bonds, and those associated with the crystallinity of PE and the tacticity of PP. The results showed that none of the usual degradation indexes followed a clear trend with increasing exposure and that the evolution of absorption peaks was not consistent among different fragments. We used the Orthogonal Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA) method to process the whole information contained in the FTIR spectra in response to the chemical changes occurring during photochemical ageing. The results showed that the FTIR spectra contained sufficient information to cluster samples according to the irradiation received. Variable Importance of the Projection (VIP) analyses showed that the information for discriminating among different exposures was mainly contained in the absorption peaks corresponding to the hydroxyl and carbonyl stretching absorptions. The chemometric models had large determination coefficients, despite the large number of variables involved and could be applied to assess the environmental fate of plastics under environmental stressors.