High pressure deep-release impact experiments on high density and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene

The high pressure dynamic response of polymers is important to a wide variety of applications. The details of compressibility and reactivity can have a large effect on overall behaviors of dynamic systems even when polymers are used in small amounts. Polyethylene is of broad interest for a variety of applications, as an ingredient and as a pure material. It is also of significant interest as a model system to understand the correlating effects of polymer dynamics in a material with a relatively simple chemical composition that can have highly varied properties through the alteration of molecular weight and associated crystallinity of the material. Although a variety of Hugoniot and dynamic information is available for polyethylene, it is a challenge to obtain information on the product equation of state at pressures high enough to achieve decomposition. Following recent successes in producing deep release states in compressed epoxy material, a series of plate impact experiments was performed in the same c...