Melt shear viscosity of original and recycled PET in wide range shear rate

Abstract

Among the plastic materials, the PET is the most often used one. The collecting of the material to be recycled is partially solved. This way we have great quantity of reground PET. During the regrinding the structure of molecules changes and these properties can be measured by rheology methods. Polymer melts are -Newtonian fluids and the flow curves of the materials can be used to characterize the molecular weight and the molecular weight distribution. This research is focused on the characterization of original and ground PET materials. Inherent viscosities were determined to characterize the materials. Flow curves of pure and blended materials were measured at different temperatures.