Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : September 09, 2018 - September 12, 2018
The thermoplastic elastomers(TPEs) are physical mixtures of polymers. The TPEs are manufactured by extrusion or injection molding process without vulcanization agents. Impact absorbing materials in sports equipment are one of the expected applications of TPEs due to good processability and less-smell. For examples, face guards, head-gears and protectors are expected to be applied. In this paper, static and dynamic mechanical properties of TPEs were investigated to expand the applicability of TPEs to the impact absorbing material for the sports equipment. In this study, TPEs developed by the Kuraray Plastics Co., Ltd. were applied for static and dynamic tests. To investigate the static mechanical properties of TPEs, the uniaxial tensile loading tests were conducted. The nonlinear viscoelasticity considering damage were applied to representation of the experimental results. The FEM analysis showed good applicability to static mechanical properties including damage which was excited by the maximum deformation of TPEs. To investigate the dynamic mechanical properties of TPEs, a drop weight impact testing machine was developed. Impact absorbing properties of TPEs were evaluated by the impact force and impact time with baseball weight.
