In this study, the effect of orientation on the indentation hardness and energy absorption of an oriented transparent Trogamid polyamide was investigated with a spherical indentation methodology. It was found that the orientation significantly improved the indentation hardness and energy absorbed by plastic deformation. From the indentation hardness measurement, the elastic modulus, yield stress, and strain hardening exponent were derived from both the elastic and plastic regions of the indentation load-displacement curves. The elastic modulus was found to remain the same with orientation; the yield stress and the strain hardening exponent increased with orientation. The increase in the strain hardening exponent was the primary reason for the improved indentation hardness and energy absorption in the oriented samples. The mechanical properties from indentation measurements were compared to values obtained from tension true stress/true strain measurements. Good agreement was observed between the results from the indentation and tension tests. The effect of temperature on the mechanical properties was also studied. It was found that the modulus and yield stress were higher at a lower temperature; however, the strain hardening exponent remained unaffected.

In this study, we investigated the effect of orientation by solid-state cross-rolling on the morphology, puncture deformation, and fracture mechanism of an amorphous TROGAMID material and three semicrystalline polymers: high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP), and nylon 6/6. In amorphous TROGAMID, it was found that orientation preferentially aligned polymer chains along the rolling deformation direction and reduced the plastic deformation of TROGAMID in a low-temperature puncture test. The decrease of ductility with orientation changed the fracture mechanism of TROGAMID from ductile hole enlargement failure in the unoriented control to a more brittle delamination failure in TROGAMID crossrolled to a 75% thickness reduction. For semicrystalline polymers HDPE, PP, and nylon 6/6, the randomly oriented crystalline lamellae in the controls were first oriented into an oblique angle to the rolling direction (RD) before the lamellae became fragmented and preferentially oriented with the chain axis parallel to the RD. The morphological change resulted in the decrease of ductility in HDPE in the low-temperature puncture test. In PP and nylon 6/6, the brittle fracture of unoriented controls was changed into ductile failure when they were cross-rolled to a 50% thickness reduction. This was attributed to the tilted crystal lamellae morphology, which permitted chain slip deformation of crystals with the chain axis parallel to the maximum shear stress direction. With further orientation of PP and nylon 6/6 to a 75% thickness reduction, the failure mechanism changed back to brittle fracture as the morphology transformed into a layered discoid structure with the chain axis of the fragmented crystal blocks parallel to the RD; this prevented chain slip deformation of the crystals.

The effect of biaxial orientation by solidstate crossrolling on the morphology of crystalline polymers including polypropylene (PP), high density polyethylene (HDPE) and Nylon 6/6 was investigated with polarized optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy, wide-angle X-ray scattering, and small-angle X-ray scattering techniques. It was found that crossrolling gradually changed the initial spherulitic structure into a biaxially oriented crystal texture with chain axis of crystals becoming parallel to the rolling direction for all three polymers. The effect of microstructure change on the macromechanical properties was studied in tension at both ambient temperature and À40C. In tension at room temperature, the localized necking deformation of HDPE and PP control changed upon orientation into homogeneous deformation for the entire sample length. This was attributed to that the oriented crystal morphology eliminated the stress concentration, which existed in the original spherulitic structure from lamellae orientation in the polar and equatorial regions. At ambient conditions, the elastic moduli of HDPE and PP were found to decrease slightly with orientation whereas the modulus of Nylon 6/6 increased with increasing orientation. This was due to the fact that the amorphous chains of HDPE and PP are in a rubbery state and orientation increased the shear relaxation in the orientation direction but the amorphous chains of Nylon 6/6 are in the glassy state inhibited the shear relaxation. Both the yield stress and strain hardening exponent increased with increasing orientation for all three polymers. In tension at À40 C, orientation changed the failure mechanism of all three polymers from brittle fracture into ductile failure, as the original spherulitic structure was changed into an oriented structure with chain axis of crystals becoming parallel to the tension direction, which allowed chain slip deformation of crystals and resulted in oriented samples showing ductile failure.

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