Enhancement of viscoelastic property of MABS processed by melt compounding and injection molding

This work is focused on developing a new type of polymer blend to improve the viscoelastic property of methyl methacrylate acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (MABS). A multi-phase binary polymer blend was prepared by melt mixing in a twin screw extruder with three different weight ratios (10, 20, and 30 wt%) with a dynamically vulcanized alloy consisting mostly of fully cured ethylene propylene diene rubber (EPDM) particles encapsulated in a polypropylene (PP) matrix trade name Santoprene and an engineered styrene based thermoplastic elastomer trade name VDT to enhance the viscoelastic property of the blends. The compatibility and performance of the binary blend were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), laser microscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and tensile analysis. The DMA analysis of the samples revealed that the damping performance was significantly increased with the incorporation of the elastomeric phase into the MABS matrix. In addition, the morphological analysis revealed that VDT is more compatible with MABS compared to Santoprene. The NMR and FT-IR analysis further supported the reason for higher compatibility of VDT and MABS blend. The improvement of the damping properties has been observed with the increased wt % of the VDT and Santoprene in the blends.