Heat Flow Estimation in Polymer Films during Orientational Drawing at the Local Heater

The optimization of the process of polymer film orientational drawing using the local heater was investigated. One of the problems with this technology is that the strength of the resulting fibers differs significantly from the theoretical estimates. It is assumed that one of the reasons is related to the peculiarity of this technology, when at the point of drawing the film is heated only on one side, which creates a temperature difference between the sides of the film in contact with the heater and the non-contact sides of the film in the air. Estimates show that even a small temperature difference of just 1 °C between these surfaces leads to a significant difference in the rate of plastic deformation of the corresponding near-surface layers. As a consequence, during hardening, in the stretching region, tensile stress is concentrated on the "cold" side of the film, and this effect can presumably lead to the generation of more defects overthere. It has been suggested that defects arising during first stage of hardening, namely, neck formation, can serve as a trigger for the formation of defects such as kink bands on the "cold" side with further orientational strengthening due to plastic deformation of the resulting fibrillar structure, at the boundaries of which microcracks are formed, leading to rupture of the oriented sample. The numerical calculation of heat propagation due to heat conduction in the film from the local surface of the heater is carried out and the temperature distribution along the thickness and width of the film during drawing is found. The temperature difference in the heated layer of the film between the contact and non-contact sides with the heater was calculated depending on the thickness of the film and the speed of its movement along the heater. It was found that the most homogeneous temperature distribution over the film thickness, which is required, by default, for the synchronous transformation of the unoriented initial folded lamellar structure into a fibrillar structure, is observed only for films with a thickness of less than 50 μm. The calculation allows us to scientifically justify the choice of orientation drawing speed and optimal thickness of the oriented polymer film, which is extremely important, for example, for obtaining super-strong and high-modulus UHMWPE filaments used in products for various purposes: from body armor to sports equipment and bioimplants.