Thermoplastic Elastomer - Types

Types

There are six generic classes of commercial TPEs:

  1. Styrenic block copolymers
  2. Polyolefin blends
  3. Elastomeric alloys (TPE-v or TPV)
  4. Thermoplastic polyurethanes
  5. Thermoplastic copolyester
  6. Thermoplastic polyamides.

Examples of TPE products that come from block copolymers group are Arnitel (DSM), Solprene (Dynasol), Engage (Dow Chemical), Hytrel (Du Pont), Dryflex and Mediprene (ELASTO), Kraton (Shell chemical division).

In order to qualify as a thermoplastic elastomer, a material must have these three essential characteristics:

  1. The ability to be stretched to moderate elongations and, upon the removal of stress, return to something close to its original shape.
  2. Processable as a melt at elevated temperature.
  3. Absence of significant creep.

Read more about this topic:  Thermoplastic Elastomer

Famous quotes containing the word types:

    “The American man is a very simple and cheap mechanism. The American woman I find a complicated and expensive one. Contrasts of feminine types are possible. I am not absolutely sure that there is more than one American man.”
    —Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)

    “As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”
    —Saul Bellow (b. 1915)

    “If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)