Rheological and mechanical properties of ABS/PC blends

Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene (ABS), polycarbonate (PC) and their alloys are an important class of engineering thermoplastics that are widely used for automotive industry, computer and equipment housings. For the process of recycling mixtures of ABS and PC, it is desirable to know how sensitive the blend properties are to changes in compositions. It was for this reason that blends of virgin ABS and virgin PC at five different compositions, namely, 15%, 30%, 50%, 70% and 85% by weight of ABS were prepared and characterised by rheological and mechanical measurements. Rheological properties of these blends in steady, oscillatory and transient step shear and mechanical properties, namely, tensile strength, elongation-at-break and Izod impact strength are reported. The results show that PC behaves in a relatively Newtonian manner, but ABS exhibits significant shear thinning. The ABS-rich blends show a trend that is similar to that of ABS, while PC-rich blends, namely 0% and 15%, exhibit a nearly Newtonian behaviour. However, at a fixed shear rate or frequency, the steady shear or the dynamic viscosity varied respectively in a non-monotonic manner with composition. Except for 15% blend, the viscosities of other blends fall into a narrow band indicating a wide-operation window of varying blend ratio. The blends exhibited a lower viscosity than either of the two pure components. The other noticeable feature was that the blends at 70% and 85% ABS content had a higher G' than pure ABS, indicating an enhancement of elastic effect. The tensile yield strength of the blends followed the ‘rule of mixtures’ showing a decreasing value with the increase of ABS content in PC. However, the elongation-at-break and the impact strength did not appear to obey this ‘rule of mixtures,’ which suggests that morphology of the blends also plays a significant role in determining the properties. Indeed, scanning electron micrographs of the fracture surfaces of the different blends validate this hypothesis, and the 15% blend is seen to have the most distinct morphology and correspondingly different behaviour and properties.