APPLICATIONS AND PROCESSING OF POLYMERS（应用程序和处理的聚合物）.pdf

Material Science Prof. Satish V. Kailas Associate Professor Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore – 560012 India Chapter 11. Applications and Processing of Polymers Polymers play a very important role in human life. In fact, our body is made of lot of polymers, e.g. Proteins, enzymes, etc. Other naturally occurring polymers like wood, rubber, leather and silk are serving the humankind for many centuries now. Modern scientific tools revolutionized the processing of polymers thus available synthetic polymers like useful plastics, rubbers and fiber materials. As with other engineering materials (metals and ceramics), the properties of polymers are related their constituent structural elements and their arrangement. The suffix in polymer ‘mer’ is originated from Greek word meros – which means part. The word polymer is thus coined to mean material consisting of many parts/mers. Most of the polymers are basically organic compounds, however they can be inorganic (e.g. silicones based on Si-O network). This chapter introduces classification of polymers, processing and synthesis of polymers, followed by mechanism of deformation and mechanical behavior of polymers. 11.1 Polymer types and Polymer synthesis processing Polymers are classified in several ways – by how the molecules are synthesized, by their molecular structure, or by their chemical family. For example, linear polymers consist of long molecular chains, while the branched polymers consist of primary long chains and secondary chains that