Effect of plasticizer on thermodynamic properties of nylons: Model, phenomenology, and proposed experiments

Motivated by experiments showing decreasing tensile modulus of nylons with increasing plasticizer content, a model involving the disruption of nylon h ydrogen bonding by addition of plasticizer is proposed. This leads to propo sed further experiments and suggests a complementary phenomenological analy sis that involves the bulk modulus. The surface energy as a function of pla sticizer concentration is then incorporated into the phenomenology. The imp ortance of varying the temperature in the proposed thermodynamic measuremen ts is stressed. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.