Theoretical Analysis and Experimental Study on Microfibrillar Morphology Development in PPTLCP Blend

In this paper it has been demonstrated that it is possible to generate in situ fibre composite from blends of a thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer (TLCP) and polypropylene by using combination of a modular multi-fed twinscrew extruder with an extensional flow mixer (EFM) as a novel process. Experimental results revealed that almost all TLCP droplets passing through the converging-diverging regions of the EFM are deformed into fibrils oriented to flow direction, indicating that this process does not suffer the limitation imposed by viscosity ratio of the blend components and TLCP concentration.The results obtained from the flow analysis performed on the converging regions of the EFM showed that LID distribution of the TLCP fibrils can be predicted in terms of the lineal stretch parameter calculated on the basis of kinematical approach.