THE EFFECT OF SEBS BLOCK COPOLYMER ON MECHANICAL AND TRIBOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF POLYPROPYLENE

Polypropylene, PP, is a versatile commodity plastic with one of the largest global consumption because of its low cost and attractive final properties. Although, its application is rather limited because of its relatively moderate fracture performance. The addition of thermoplastic elastomer could lead to improving impact properties of plastomer materials. In this paper, effort has been undertaken to study the effect of thermoplastic elastomer styrene-ethylene/butylene-styrene block copolymer, SEBS, as impact modifier for polypropylene, PP. Blends of plastomer/thermoplastic elastomer, PP/SEBS, were prepared by twin-screw extruder and parameters of torque, pressure and capacity were followed during processing. Fractal analysis of processing parameters was performed and Hurst index determined. Instron Mechanical Machine was used to determine mechanical properties of investigated blends, tensile strength, elongation at break and yield, while impact properties of PP/SEBS blends were obtained by Izod. Tribological behaviour of PP/SEBS blends were investigated by multiple scratch tests performed by CSEM Micro-Scratch Tester. Results show that styrene-ethylene/butylene –styrene block copolymer acts as a good impact modifier for polypropylene