PHENOMENOLOGICAL MODEL FOR THE UNIFIED STUDIES OF DIFFERENT PHYSICAL-PROPERTIES OF POLYMERS

A phenomenological model has been proposed to understand the developme nt of strong anisotropy in physical properties of semicrystalline poly mers on uniaxial drawing. The proposed model introduces temperature as an explicit parameter in the orientation function. The model contains two free parameters for each polymer which can be evaluated by fittin g the experimental data on birefringence versus draw ratio at a partic ular temperature. The calculated values of elastic moduli, thermal con ductivity and expansibility along and perpendicular to the drawing dir ection over the entire range of draw ratio and a wide range of tempera ture are in good agreement with experimental values.