Mechanical properties of paints and coatings英文电子书.pdfVIP

16 Mechanical properties of paints and coatings T A Strivens 16.1 Introduction The mechanical properties of paint and coatings are of paramount importance in maintaining the important protective as well as to a lesser extent the decorative functions of such treatments during their service life. Paint films are subject to a great variety of mechanical forces and deformations. Thus they may suffer large forces concentrated over a small surface area for very short times, as in the impact of stones, gravel, etc. on car body paints, or they may suffer a succession of slow cycles of deformation, as happens to decorative gloss paints on wood, for example, on house window frames, as the wood expands and contracts in response to changes in atmospheric moisture and temperature. Such forces and deformations can be large: of the order of gigapascals per unit area in the impact case, or 10-15% strain in the case of wood expansion and contraction (such deformation is also anisotropic, owing to the grain structure of the wood). So it is the ultimate mechanical proper- ties of paint films, which is of most practical importance, i.e. the stress or strain that leads to plastic yield (irreversible deformation) or failure by cracking of the film. Not only do paint films suffer a wide variety of mechanical stresses and strains during their service life, but also their mechanical properties change during it. This affects the ultimate mechanical properties such as yield and fracture, and in the end determines how long a coating film can preserve its physical integrity and can fulfil its protective role satisfactorily. The continual exposure to air and water condensa- tion (dew) on the paint surface leads to steady leaching of low molecular weight species, such as retained solvent, plasticizer. or low molecular weight polymeric species as well as degradative