Effect of thermal-oxidative aging on mechanical, chemical, and thermal properties of recycled polyamide 66

This article addresses the effect of thermal aging on unreinforced and glass-reinforced recycled polyamide 66. As an accelerated test, injection-molded test bars were aged at 110, 140, and 170°C for up to 4000 h in air to simulate service life. FTIR spectroscopy demonstrated that the oxidative degradation primarily occurred between the surface and a depth of 0.5 mm. Furthermore, the degradation in the surface region was more pronounced with recycled as well as unstabilized materials. Reprocessing resulted in a faster increase of carbonyl groups, a decrease in melting peak temperature, and elongation at break during subsequent aging. Because of process-induced fiber shortening, however, the elongation at break of recycled reinforced samples was always at least as high as that of virgin samples for up to 4000 h of aging at 140°C. The decrease in melting peak temperature as determined by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) indicated that the surface or boundary regions of the crystallites in the material are affected by aging. The loss in elongation at break for the reinforced material was shown to correlate with the reduction in melting peak temperature of material taken from the surface region of aged samples. The contribution of the degraded surface region to the properties was studied by removal of surface layers prior to testing. The degradation in the surface region was the sole cause, even of glass fiber-reinforced polyamide, for the embrittlement of aged samples. Furthermore, aging-induced changes in tensile strength and modulus were independent of the removal of the surface region, indicating that these properties are controlled by changes occurring in the bulk of the material. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 65:1619–1630, 1997