Assessment of Melt Rheological Behavior of PTT/PE and PTT/PA 12 Blends by Emulsion and Micromechanical Models

To describe the rheological behavior of polymer blends using emulsionbased (Palierne theory) as well as micromechanical models (Coranapproach), two immiscible polymeric blend systems of poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT)/polyamide-12 (PA12) and PTT/polyethylene (PE) having different levels of molecular interactions were investigated as model systems. The role of interfacial interactions, viscosity ratio, composition, and shear rate were also explored with respect to the aforementioned theories. For both systems no reasonable agreement was noticed between the experimental data and Palierne model predictions, which was related to high viscosity ratio and high dispersed phase content. Nevertheless, the PTT/PE blend, having almost a zero interfacial thickness due to the absence of intermolecular interaction, exhibited a seemingly better correlation with experimental data compared to PTT/PA12 system. Moreover a better agreement between experimental and theoretical data was obtained in the blend where the viscosity of dispersed phase was higher than that of matrix. Also, in both model systems, the values predicted from Palierne were closer to empirical data at higher frequencies most likely due to breakdown in physical network structure. Coran analysis due to its micromechanical origin could give outputs in good agreement with the experimental results in both model systems.