Characterisation and Modelling of Moisture Gradients in Polyamide 6

Polyamide 6 (PA6) is able to absorb water from the surrounding air and bond to it by forming hydrogen bonds between the carbonamide groups of its molecular chains. Diffusion processes cause locally different water concentrations in the (component) cross-section during the sorption process, resulting...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPolymers Vol. 13; no. 18; p. 3141
Main Authors Sambale, Anna Katharina, Maisl, Michael, Herrmann, Hans-Georg, Stommel, Markus
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 17.09.2021
MDPI
Subjects
Composite materials
Computed tomography
computer tomography
concentration-dependent diffusion coefficients
Energy
FE modelling
Finite element method
Hydrogen bonds
Integrals
Mechanical properties
Modelling
Moisture content
Molecular chain diffusion
Molecular chains
polyamide 6
Polyamide resins
reconstruction method
Sensors
Sorption
Stress analysis
Textiles
Water baths
Water distribution
Water engineering
water sorption
X-rays
Germany
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Summary:Polyamide 6 (PA6) is able to absorb water from the surrounding air and bond to it by forming hydrogen bonds between the carbonamide groups of its molecular chains. Diffusion processes cause locally different water concentrations in the (component) cross-section during the sorption process, resulting in locally different mechanical properties due to the water-induced plasticisation effect. However, the water content of PA6 is usually specified as an integral value, so no information about a local water distribution within a component is provided. This paper shows a method to characterise moisture distributions within PA6 samples using low-energy computer tomography (CT) techniques and comparing the reconstructed results with a developed finite elements (FE) modelling method based on Fick’s diffusion laws with concentration-dependent diffusion coefficients. For this purpose, the ageing of the samples at two different water bath temperatures as well as at different integral water contents are considered. The results obtained by CT reconstruction and FE modelling are in very good agreement, so that the concentration distributions by water sorption of PA6 calculated by FEM can be regarded as validated.
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ISSN:2073-4360
2073-4360
DOI:10.3390/polym13183141