Determination of rheological parameters from parison extrusion experiments

Abstract

Abstract The parison extrusion and the effects of post‐extrusion swelling and sagging in the blow molding process have been studied by several authors and some qualitative relationships with rheological parameters have been attempted. The aim of this work is to show that, under some simplifying assumptions, the relevant rheological parameters—the swelling of the parison and its tensile compliance—can be directly determined from the viscoelastic analysis of the process. The reliability of the model has been tested by experiments carried out by the pinch‐off mold technique which provides the parison weight profile as a function of both previous extrusion history and mold closing delay. First of all it has been shown that the proposed model is suitable to represent the data. The swelling behavior shows the expected dependence on time and shear rate and the long‐time swelling data compare well with those determined by capillary extrusion experiments. It has also been found that the measured tensile compliance is of the same order of magnitude as that determined by conversion of tensile relaxation experiments; however, in the blow molding experiments the compliance of the parison decreases with increasing extrusion shear rate, i.e., by increasing the induced anisotropy of the polymer. As rheological examples, the performance displayed on both industrial and laboratory machines is discussed for three high density polyethylenes.