Effects of loading conditions and temperature on environmental stress cracking of low‐density polyethylene

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Abstract
Fracture mechanics was used to investigate the environmental stress cracking (ESC) of low density polyethylene (LDPE). Annealed and quenched samples were prepared; a single edge notch was made and the samples were fractured under constant load in a liquid methanol environment. The relation between the stress intensity factorKand the crack speed ȧ has been investigated. There is a large difference between annealed and quenched samples in the variation of this relation with temperature and applied load. The cause of this difference is discussed in detail. We propose that thermally activated molecular motion is essential to ESC of the annealed LDPE while stress concentration contributes markedly to ESC of the quenched LDPE.

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