Fatigue and Tribological Properties of Plastics and Elastomers, 2nd Edition

Fatigue and Tribological Properties of Plastics and Elastomers, 2nd Edition

Author: Laurence W. McKeen
ISBN 978-0-08-096450-8 

pages 312, hardbound
$299.00
For all practical purposes, the useful life of a plastic component is equal to its fatigue life under conditions of cyclic loading such as those that occur in vibration. Equally important to materials engineers and designers are abrasion, friction, and wear—tribological properties. Over 80 generic families are covered including thermoplastics, thermosets, thermoplastic elastomers, and rubbers. Neat resins, blends, and alloys, plastics with various combinations of fillers, additives and more are covered. Also, covers plastics mated to plastics and metals.
Based on the premisses that 20 to 80% of material failure is caused by fatigue, a detailed analysis of the existing data is made available in this volume. The book contains the introduction to related phenomena, such as crack initiation and growth, ductile to brittle transitions, factors related to fatigue. The tribological properties are discussed in the next section, including wear factor, a coefficient of friction, PV limit, testing methods, and additives to reduce wear.

The sections included in the introduction are further elaborated in the chapters devoted to materials. There are 68 chapters on fatigue resistance of different families of polymers and plastics. The second part includes 31 chapters on tribological properties of different families of polymers and plastics. The materials in these two sections are divided into subsections of thermoplastics, thermoplastic alloys, thermosets, and thermoplastic elastomers which contain chapters on generic polymer families.

Each chapter contains a discussion of properties of commercial materials falling into this group. For each of commercial products, the information is given on parameters which affect the performance of a given material, modes of failure, and advantages of the material.

Effect of additives, glass reinforcement, molecular weight, and operating variables are analyzed in the context of fatigue resistance. The graphical representation of results of testing follows the discussion. Typical data include stress vs. cycles to failure and fatigue propagation.

The tribological properties are analyzed in a similar manner, including analysis of material properties and composition factors which influence material performance, followed by graphs containing data. Tribological properties are characterized by wear factors of material and mating surface, static and dynamic coefficients of friction, limiting pressure velocity, Taber abrasion, NBS abrasion index and weight loss.

Properties discussed in this volume are given as a function of pressure velocity, temperature, elapsed time, humidity, material composition, frequency, specimen size, loading conditions, atmospheric conditions, specimen geometry, etc. The above brief overview of content shows that this data bank offers comprehensive treatment of the subject. The data included in this volume were collected from close to 500 sources of information on fatigue and wear.

Considering that fatigue and wear are the major causes of plastic failure, this volume should be consulted by anyone who works with these materials for the purpose of the design of new products, their production, and use. This database is a truly unique resource of information on the subject. It saves the time of product development, assists in material choice, and may help to reduce costly failures.

Introduction to Fatigue; Introduction to the Tribology of Plastics and Elastomers; Introduction to Plastics and Polymers; Styrenics; polyethers; Polyesters; Polyimides; Polyamides; polyolefins and Acrylics; Thermoplastic Elastomers; Fluoropolymers; High Temperature Plastics; Appendices; abbreviations, Tradenames; Conversion Factors

Laurence W. McKeen, DuPont Teflon Finishes Group (former), Delaware, U.S.A.