Effect of Nucleating Additives on Short- and Long-Term Tensile Strength and Residual Stresses of Welded Polypropylene Samples.

Additives such as nucleating agents are often used in the processing of plastic products not only for improving production efficiency but also for enhancing mechanical performance. In this work, the short- and long-term tensile strength, the morphology as well as the residual stresses of the welded polypropylene (PP) samples with different fillers (carbon black and special beta-nucleating agents) and different dimensionless joining paths are analyzed. Results obtained are then compared with those that are representative of the initial, filler-free samples.