Design Properties for Plastics Engineering - Engineering and High Performance Polymers (collection of all my posts)

 

The Secret of High Performance Polymers: Why They Can Handle High Heat and Harsh Chemicals?

Introduction to the World of High Performance Polymers [Youtube training video; German]
High performance polymers used in children buggies
Fluoropolymers As Enabler For Megatrends: From Resource Efficiency To Digitalization
10 Fluoropolymer Facts for Designers & Engineers
Design Properties for Engineers: HDT @ 1.8 MPa Values for High Performance Polymers
Creep Strength and Toughness of High Performance Plastics
High Performance Polymers: Suitable for Low Temperatures?
Design Properties for Engineers: Weldline Strength of High Performance Polymers
Design Properties for Engineers: Coefficient of Linear Thermal Expansion (CLTE) of High Performance Polymers
Design Properties for Engineers: Chemical Resistance of High Performance Polymers
High Heat Plastics (HHP) Demystified incl. Cheat Sheet
Design Properties for Engineers: Tensile Properties of High Performance Polymers
Design Properties for Engineers: Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) of High Performance Polymers
Design Properties for Engineers: Flexural Properties of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Thermal Conductivity of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Transition Temperatures (Tg, Tm, CUT) of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Price Performance Ratio of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Electrical and Dielectric Properties of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Fire Behavior (UL 94) and Limiting Oxygen Index (LOI) of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers - Compression Stress of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Water and Moisture Absorption of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Fuel and Oil Resistance of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers – Processing Temperatures of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers – Tribological Properties of High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: 7 Key Properties vs. Density of Unfilled High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Key Properties vs. Density of Filled High Performance Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers – Residence Times of High Performance Polymers (Injection Moulding)

Design Properties for Engineers: Hot Runner System Suitability of High Performance Polymers

Aliphatic and Aromatic Polyketones – Introduction, Performance Comparison and Applications

Design Properties for Engineers – Comparison Property Data of Polyphthalamides (PPAs)

Design Properties for Engineers: UL RTI vs HDT of Commodity, Engineering and High Performance Polymers

Design Data for Plastics Engineering: Selected Properties of Natural Fiber Based Polymer Compounds

Design Properties for Plastics Engineering: Key Electrical Properties of Selected Engineering and High Performance Polymers for E-Mobility

Design Properties for Polymer Engineering: Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) of Unfilled Engineering Polymers 

Design Properties for Polymer Engineering: Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) of Reinforced Engineering Polymers

Plastic Part Design Properties for Engineers - Water Uptake of Aliphatic Polyamides

HDT @ 1.82 MPa Filled and Unfilled Thermoplastics

Plastic Part Design Properties for Engineers - CTE/ CLTE of Polymers, Mineral Fillers and Metals

Plastic Part Design Data - Thermal conductivity of Polymers as a Function of Temperature

Plastic Design Data - CLTE of Polymers as a Function of Temperature

Plastic Multipoint Design Data: Specific Heat Capacity as a function of Temperature

Plastic Multipoint Design Data: Creep Strain of Amorphous and Semi-Crystalline Polymers

Design Properties for Engineers: Chemical Resistance of Plastics - An Overview for Material Selection

Plastic Multipoint Design Data: Brittleness as a Function of Temperature

My Annual Review 2021 and Outlook for 2022

 

Hello and welcome to my end-of-the-year review 2021 and outlook for 2022.

“Expect the unexpected”

2021 was another year under the umbrella of “expect the unexpected”, not only for the plastics industry, but also for the world economy and societies.

We have seen major supply chain disruptions due to Covid-crisis, the North American winter storm (“Uri”) which also led to force majeure at chemical companies in the Texas region, combined with the Suez Canal blockage after the grounding of Ever Given.

Apart from price increase roller coasters and force majeure, big chemical companies start to streamline their portfolios and start divesting. DSM, DuPont, and Lanxess already announce their divestment of their plastics divisions. More are likely to come and at the end of this decade we see a new chemical company landscape.

Top 5 most popular blog posts published this year

On the blog, the journey continued with several posts per month on different polymer engineering and plastics topics to help show that plastics contribute to solving major problems and not cause them.

Below an overview of the top 5 posts of this year

1. Eco-profiles of Polymer Resins – Global Warming Potential

2. Bio-Based Polyamides – Part 1: PA 5.6 and 5T(Chemical Structure, Production, Properties, Applications, Value Proposition)

3. Guest Interview: Doug EOM – POKETONETechnical Support Engineer from Hyosung Chemical – “Polyketone can becharacterized as strong, tough, and ductile.”

4. Joining Techniques - Laser Welding of Plastics

5. HDPE Plastic Bag Degradation - The Experiment

Outlook on 2022

In 2022, I will continue to present posts which evolve around 4 main categories:

- Sustainability in plastics (Circular Economy, sustainable design, renewable plastics, recycling of plastics, ocean water plastics, eco-profiles)

- Polymer material selection

- Design properties for engineers (incl. eco-design for sustainability in plastics) and Rules of Thumbs in polymer engineering

- Leadership and strategy in plastics industry

Furthermore, I invite you all to leave topics you would like to read about in 2022 in the comment box below or leave me a short message here.

Last but not least, I would like to thank all readers of my posts!!!

I hope to welcome you again next year.

I wish you happy holidays and a very happy New Year 2022!

Thank you and #findoutaboutplastics,

Greetings,

Herwig Juster

Post also available on my LinkedIn page. 

Interested to talk with me about your plastic selection and part design needs - here you can contact me 

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Polymer Material Selection (PoMS) for Electric Vehicles (xEVs) - check out my new online course

Christmas Greetings 2021 I Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

 Dear community, followers, supporters, business partners, colleagues, and friends

I would like to express my many thanks for your trust and cooperation this year.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, all the best, and most of all good health for the New Year in 2022!

Stay tuned for more content in 2022!

Best regards,

Herwig Juster 

#MerryChristmas #Xmas #NewYear #FindOutAboutPlastics

Polymer Material Selection Support for E-Mobility [Infographic]

 Hello and welcome to a new infographic on the polymer material selection for electromobility. 

In general, electric cars require new components such as power electronics (inverters, converters), traction motors, high-voltage charges and lithium-ion batteries. This in turn changes the requirement profile of plastics. I discussed the requieremnt changes in this three part series as well as in my EMI shielding posts. In my five part video series I discuss the electrical design properties in detail. 

Below I summarized the material requirements vs. polymeric materials and materials for different operating temperatures for high voltage components. 

Polymer Material Selection Support for  E-Mobility

Thanks for reading and #findoutaboutplastics

Greetings

Herwig

#EMobility #PolymerMaterialSelection

Interested to talk with me about your plastic selection and part design needs - here you can contact me 

Interested in my monthly blog posts – then subscribe here and receive my high performance polymers knowledge matrix.

New to my Find Out About Plastics Blog – check out the start here section

My YouTube channel

You can support me here on  PayPalMe

Polymer Material Selection (PoMS) for Electric Vehicles (xEVs) - check out my new online course

Sources:

[1] Drivers of Electromobility, Yu Bin et al. , Kunststoffe international 2/2020

Eco-profiles of Polymer Resins – Global Warming Potential (GWP) [incl. interactive Tableau Dashboard]

Hello and welcome to a new post. Today we discuss the topic of global warming potential of polymer resins as part of eco-profiles. A detailed post on sustainability in the plastics industry can be found here.

Life cycle analysis (LCA) and eco-profiles

In general, eco-profiles are used to determine the environmental impacts of plastics. They are made out of different data sources. For instance, PlasticsEurope.org uses Life Cycle Inventory datasets (LCI) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) to calculate the eco-profiles for plastics.

The ISO standards for Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) are ISO 14040 and 14044, where 21 impact categories are lined out. Scope of those ISO standards is on the cradle-to-gate of the products. For having a 360° view on the environmental impact, several values are estimated:

• Global Warming Potential (GWP)
• Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP)
• Acidification Potential (AP)
• Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP)
• Eutrophication Potential (EP)
• Dust/particulate matter
• Total particulate matter (Non-hazardous / hazardous)

In this post we focus on the Global Warming Potential (GWP) value only. GWP is related to climate change and represents the product carbon footprint (PCF). The estimation is based upon life cycle inventory (LCI) data from PlasticsEurope's member companies. It has been prepared according to the rules of PlasticsEurope’s Eco-profiles and Environmental Declarations – LCI Methodology and considers from cradle to gate (i.e. from raw material extraction to polymer resin at plant).

Environmental Performance

The figure below shows the Global Warming Potential (GWP) associated with the production of 1 kg of polymer resin.

Eco-profiles: Global Warming Potential (GWP) associated with the production of 1 kg of polymer resin

Updated with bio-based long chain Polyamides, High Performance Polymers and Polyesters. 

Eco-profiles: Global Warming Potential (GWP) - raw data (updated with Bio-based polymers and PVOH)

Also, I created an interactive dashboard with Tableau, allowing you to have all the product carbon footprint values as a function of thermal properties such as glass transition temperature Tg, HDT 1.8 MPa, UL RTI, and Cp values in few clicks avaiable. By using the filter functions, it is easy to refine the search for a specific material. 

Conclusions

Eco-profiles are a vital part for businesses to select their materials in the context of a circular economy and low environmental impact. Results such as the Global Warming Potential may even enter the technical data sheets of material manufacturers which allows purchasers and engineers to pre-select the polymer resins.

Furthermore, the data of plastics indicates a lower GWP level compared to competing metals such as Magnesium (25.8 kg CO2 eq/kg Mg) and Aluminum (9.7 kg CO2 eq/kg Al).

Also, I have written about bio-based polymers and circular economy here and here.

Thanks for reading and #findoutaboutplastics

Greetings

Herwig

Interested in my monthly blog posts – then subscribe here and receive my high performance polymers knowledge matrix.

!NEW! Ultra and High Performance Polymer Selection - new online course coming soon - join the waiting list

New to my Find Out About Plastics Blog - check out the start here section

My YouTube channel

My personal website

My dedicated site for Polymer Material Selection

#LifeCycleAnalysis #EcoProfile

Interested to talk with me about your plastic selection and part design needs - here you can contact me 

Interested in my monthly blog posts – then subscribe here and receive my high performance polymers knowledge matrix.

New to my Find Out About Plastics Blog – check out the start here section

My YouTube channel

You can support me here on  PayPalMe

Polymer Material Selection (PoMS) for Electric Vehicles (xEVs) - check out my new online course

Sources:

[1] https://legacy.plasticseurope.org/en/resources/eco-profiles

[2] Korea LCI database;

[3] Ecoinvent database

[4] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/31009455.pdf

[5]  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/87/1/012016/pdf

[6] https://www.plastribution.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Radici-Plastics-Focus-on-innovation-sustainability.pdf

[7] Industrial Applications of Biopolymers and their Environmental Impact edited by Abdullah Al Mamun, Jonathan Y. Chen

[8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926669016307580#fig0015

Overcoming Automotive Challenges in 2021: Replacing Magnesium Die Casting with Engineering and High Performance Plastics

Hello and welcome to a new blog post based on the recent events of Magnesium shortage in the automotive industry.

The automotive sector already has it’s fair share of challenges in 2021. Chip, plastics, and container shortage were meeting a high demand triggered by pent-up consumption due to the Covid-19 crisis in 2020.

Now another challenge came up: export of Magnesium from Asia. Energy crisis in China caused a lowering of energy intensive Magnesium production. Many Tier-1 suppliers in Europe which use Magnesium die casting to make gear boxes and steering applications suffer under this low export rate (China provides more than 50% of the global Magnesium production).

This offers engineering and high performance polymers to jump in and replace the one or the other applications such as housings and bezels.

Figure 1 compares different polymers (mainly with Carbon fiber loading) to Magnesium AZ91D, a commonly used automotive alloy. It can be shown that engineering polymers such as PA 6 and 6.6 with carbon fiber loading as well as high performance polymers such as PPS, PARA, and PPA (with CF loading) can replace Magnesium. PPS and PPA offer the advantage of high temperature durability and low water uptake.

Figure 1: Specific tensile strength vs. specific tensile modulus overview for replacing Magnesium with engineering and high performance polymers

Apart from cost and weight saving - what are some more advantages of replacing metals with plastics?

There is the possibility of consolidating several metal parts into one plastic part and having a better resistance to corrosion or chemical attacks. Also acoustics (particularly relevant in electric vehicles) can be improved, together with an improved friction and wear of parts.

How to do a metal replacement?

This I discussed in the following blog post here and additionally made a training video on YouTube of it: 

Thanks for reading and #findoutaboutplastics

Greetings

Herwig Juster

Interested to talk with me about your plastic selection and part design needs - here you can contact me 

Interested in my monthly blog posts – then subscribe here and receive my high performance polymers knowledge matrix.

New to my Find Out About Plastics Blog – check out the start here section

My YouTube channel

You can support me here on  PayPalMe

Polymer Material Selection (PoMS) for Electric Vehicles (xEVs) - check out my new online course

Literature: 

[1] https://www.autodealertodaymagazine.com/366364/auto-industry-readies-for-magnesium-shortage