Polymer Materials

Polymer materials are characterized by many attractive features that cause their widespread use in the modern economy.One of them is the ability to achieve sustained, high-orientation leads to significant improvement in the mechanical properties of the material. Very good mechanical properties, such as high rigidity (high modulus) and tensile strength of oriented polymer resulting from the specific chemical structure of macromolecules in the form of polymer chains. Covalent bonds perpendicular to the direction of orientation provides high rigidity and strength of the material in this direction. 
Theoretical estimates of strength for polyethylene have shown that the elastic modulus of the composite sample of the upright and arranged in parallel chains should be approximately 300GPa, and its tensile strength about 20-50gp (for comparison, the strength of different grades of steel is 0.5-2.8GPa). This estimate shows a very high potential in oriented polymers as construction materials. Obtaining mechanical properties similar to the theoretical estimates is not straightforward and requires the use of advanced and sophisticated technologies to achieve very high and almost perfect orientation of the macromolecules, however, proved to be feasible for some polymers in industrial scale (eg, ultra-high-strength fibers made from polyethylene very high molecular weight, UHMWPE, can reach the order of 200gp modulus, and the fibers of PBO even 280GPa). For the production of polymeric materials which do not require extremely high strength and modules may be used in a number of simpler and cheaper method of orientation, it is possible to handle even in small processing plants. 
Among the known methods of obtaining high orientation of polymer can include, among others following methods:

Spinning of the solution or gel (the production of fibers)

Melt Spinning (fibers)

Blow molding (two-axis orientation, film)

Deformation in the condensed phase:

Uniaxial tensile strength, single and multistage (fibers, tapes, films)

Biaxial stretching (transparencies)

Stretching from the soak zone (fibers, tapes, films)

Uniaxial tensile strength at high hydrostatic pressure (fiber)

Sleeve Blow (film)

Dragging through the nozzle (fibers, threads, rods, plates)

Extrusion solid body (to squeeze through the nozzle, line, rods, profiles)

Rolling (films, tapes, discs, rods, profiles)

Rolling with simultaneous stretching (JWC)

Uniaxial compression / forging (profiles, shapes)

Compression / rolling in the flat state of strain (tapes, rods, profiles)

Embossing (squeeze) through the channel angular (bars)

Fibres from synthetic polymers

The fibers made from synthetic polymers are of exceptional importance for the economy and everyday life. Due to the high technological progress, synthetic fibers are now able to successfully replace most of the natural fibers and may also show a more favorable set of properties than natural fibers, or even unusual in them. Scaleproduction of synthetic polymer fibers is also unique: the global to the fibers are processed each year some 30 million tons of various polymers. The market value ofthe manufactured fibers exceeds 60 billion USD annually, and their aggregate length is about 20 light years!