Engineering with polymers is a growing technical field which requires special knowledge. Filling a need, this ready reference brings together the hard-to-get and recently acquired knowledge usually only found scattered in the original literature. At the beginning, the reference introduces plastics as a class of technical materials, gives an overview of their properties, presents plastics processing and its possible influence on the achievable quality of plastic parts. Afterwards, plastics testing is presented as a separate, practical-scientific field of work. The possibilities and fields of application of plastics testing will be discussed. This is followed by a comprehensive treatment of the individual, relevant test areas for the characterization and qualification of plastics and plastic molded parts made from them, with descriptions of the corresponding, practical test methods. A comprehensive index provides easy access to relevant information for successful engineering with plastics and suitable methods for material characterization and for quality assurance and damage analysis of parts. Written by experienced academics and industrial researchers and developers who know the problems of plastics engineers in their daily work - and the solutions - inside out, this book offers first-hand practical knowledge and intensive discussion. The book is aimed at industry, scientists and students involved in plastics and plastic engineering and aims to help them gain the necessary understanding of polymer materials and knowledge of practical testing and evaluation of plastics.

The selection and application of engineered materials is an integrated process that requires an understanding of the interaction between materials properties, manufacturing characteristics, design considerations, and the total life cycle of the product. This reference book on engineering plastics provides practical and comprehensive coverage on how the performance of plastics is characterized during design, property testing, and failure analysis. The fundamental structure and properties of plastics are reviewed for general reference, and detailed articles describe the important design factors, properties, and failure mechanisms of plastics. The effects of composition, processing, and structure are detailed in articles on the physical, chemical, thermal, and mechanical properties. Other articles cover failure mechanisms such as: crazing and fracture; impact loading; fatigue failure; wear failures, moisture related failure; organic chemical related failure; photolytic degradation; and microbial degradation. Characterization of plastics in failure analysis is described with additional articles on analysis of structure, surface analysis, and fractography.

Derived from the fourth edition of the well-known Plastics Technology Handbook, Plastics Fundamentals, Properties, and Testing covers the behavior, characterization, and evaluation of polymers. With a luci

Thermoplastics, being non-linear viscoelastic, impose constraints on testing. End products manufactured from these thermopolastics are often anisotropic and tend to complicate the relationships between laboratory test data and service performance. Mechanical Evaluation Strategies for Plastic Materials explains new testing strategies for providing service-pertinent data within a limited budget. It relates the structure of the tests and the functions that they serve to the intrinsic nature of the mechanical properties of thermoplastic materials.