Accelerated evaluation of environmental ageing monitored by fatigue crack growth experiments

This article describes fatigue crack growth experiments to investigate the degradation of the durability of polymers due to fluid environments. The degradating effect of media causing stress cracking can be observed on the fracture surfaces of tested samples by scanning electron microscopy. Strategies to improve environmental stress cracking like changes in molecular weight, orientation, toughening with rubber particles of different sizes are discussed. Fatigue crack growth experiments can be employed as a very fast and effective screening method.