Polymer Blend Compounding and Processing

Humankind has been mixing together different materials since the dawn of written history to produce products with improved engineering properties. The compounds are more uniform have superior mechanical properties and much shorter residence times. The major continuous mixers used commercially in 2009 for compounding and blending are modular co-rotating self-wiping twin-screw extruders. Blends of the natural rubber and the new synthetic elastomers must have been studied by the IG Farbenindustrie and various German rubber fabricators such as Continental Gummi-Werke in the 1930s. Perhaps the first widely used synthetic polymer blend was the NBR-poly (vinyl chloride) system. NBR was widely used in under the hood applications in automobiles. The phase morphology of polymer blends shows significant variations in polymer melt processing. One of the most striking observations is the formation of mini-fibers in melt spun blends, where the blend experiences uniaxial elongational flow.