Analysis of properties of functional polymers ; Funkcinių polimerų savybių tyrimas

Functional polymers are of immense significance to the society. This is fundamentally because of its natural properties such as a broad range of melting points, reduced mold-shrinkage, fairly good heat and impact resistance, good chemical resistance and dimensional stability of which one or more specific properties would be a highlighting factor for its use in applications. In addition to this other factors such as low friction, wear resistance, shock-loading accommodation, elasticity, low weight and cost in comparison to other materials (metals) makes it quite ideal to use in different areas. Here in this study, tribological properties such as friction and wear have been analyzed in functional polymers with an idea to extend the knowledge to real-life application. Tribo-machinery and its functioning is studied and described in detail. Different types of Tribo-machines are analyzed and thus merits & demerits are perceived. Analysis of the effect of final-processing conditions of a functional polymer (UHMWPE) is done and tribological properties such as coefficient of friction (COF) and normalized wear rate (NWR) are done. It has been observed that it is quite ideal to have in applications, a functional polymer with low friction coefficient and low degree of normalized wear rate. Polymer post-processing by vacuum cooling was observed to produce superior surface and tribological properties but post-processing by prolonged cooling worsened the material properties in general. The vacuum cooled functional polymer is proposed to be put to practice in high-performance bearings.