Many-Scale Simulation of ABS/PC Blends for the Automotive Industry

Industrial scraps cannot be reused in an advantageous way, mainly because of their degradation. When possible, rejects are added to the virgin material for new molding, although the amount of recycled block copolymer cannot exceed 15% of moldable material to obtain good final performances. The remaining amount of scraps then follows three different routes: i) employment in very poor applications, ii) land filling, and iii) thermal treatment. For this reason, post industrial rejects constitute a major problem both from the standpoint of the European legislation and policy, and from the economic side where enterprises are concerned. In this work we have applied a multiscale simulation approach to study the nanostructured equilibrium morphology of blends consisting of mainly recycled block copolymers of special interest in the automotive industry. The main goal was the definition of the possible causes leading to incompatibility due to non virgin materials. In particular, starting from atomistic-based simulations we derived a procedure to 1) describe in appropriate fashion the polymer chains in terms of the relevant Gaussian models, and 2) determine the relevant Flory-Huggins interaction parameters. Finally, we coupled mesoscale model with finite elements codes to obtain a quantified structure-property relationship for mechanical modulus and coefficient of thermal expansion.