Environmental stress cracking of polyethylene: Analysis of the three zones of behavior and determination of crack‐front dimensions

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Abstract
Previous work has shown that in the environmental stress cracking (ESC) of polyethylene, there are three major zones of behavior depending on the applied stress and the nature of the liquid environment. These three zones correspond to “pure” ESC (zone 1), ESC controlled by the speed of penetration of the liquid within a growing crack (zone 2), and behavior as in the absence of liquid (zone 3). Analysis of the transitions between zones has shown that, in the present case, a given liquid will either be capable of giving rise to all three types of behavior depending on the stress applied, or will be totally inactive. A related analysis has enabled the order of magnitude of the dimensions of the crack tip to be estimated and this has been found to be in the range of a micron.

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