Polymer, Vol.40, No.6, 1525-1536, 1999
Effect of peel rate and temperature on delamination toughness of PC-SAN microlayers
The effect of peel rate and temperature on peel toughness and delamination failure mode of coextruded microlayer sheet consisting of alternating layers of polycarbonate (PC) and poly(styrene-co-acrylonitrile) (SAN) was studied with the T-peel test. Microlayers with thin (<1.5 mu m) SAN layers always failed by interfacial delamination and consequently the interfacial toughness was independent of rate and temperature. In microlayers with thicker SAN layers, the crack alternately propagated through crazes in the SAN and along a PC-SAN interface at intermediate peel rates. The length of the crack-tip zone, the number of crazes and the amount of craze fracture increased with increasing peel rate; the peel toughness increased accordingly. Extending the tests through eight decades in peel rate revealed a transition from craze-dominated cohesive fracture at intermediate rates to predominately interfacial fracture at either very high or very low peel rates. Transitional peel behaviour resulted from the rate sensitivity of yielding and crazing in SAN as determined from tensile tests of hulk polymer.