Impact of chemical blowing agent on polypropylene properties

Weight reduction and material saving goals in automotive applications have led to the processing of thermoplastic polymers by foam injection molding. The density of the foamed polymer can be reduced up to 20%. Whilst, work has been reported on the weight reduction of the foamed polymer by using different types of blowing agent technologies, there has been limited studies in the areas of the sound transmission loss and material dampening properties of these materials. The present study is intended to understand the effect of chemical blowing agent (CBA) on the properties of polypropylene. The molded specimens were characterized against the density, Tensile property, flexural property, Izod impact, heat deflection temperature, differential scanning colorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy (FT-IR), sound transmission loss (STL) properties as per standard test protocol and cell structures by stereo microscope. Obtained results indicates significant improvement in the polypropylene properties formulated with 3% and 5% chemical blowing agent.