Ultrasonic measurements of the elastic moduli of liquid crystalline polymers

The five independent elastic moduli of extruded rods of two thermotropic liquid crystalline polymers, Vectra B900 and Vectra A950, and the nine independent moduli of an injection-moulded bar of Vectra A950 have been measured by ultrasonic methods at 10 MHz. For Vectra B900, the sharp rise in the axial extensional modulus C33 and the moderate drop in the transverse modulus C 11 with increasing draw ratio result from the alignment of molecular chains along the extrusion direction. The chain orientation also leads to an anisotropy in the shear modulus, with the axial shear modulus (C44) exceeding the transverse shear modulus (C66) by > 50%. The mechanical anisotropy in the surface layer of the injection-moulded bar implies that the chains lie mostly in the plane parallel to the wide surface of the bar, and preferentially along the injection direction. The weak anisotropy in the core indicates almost random molecular orientation. Based on the aggregate model, the upper (Voigt) and lower (Reuss) bounds of the elastic modulus of isotropic Vectra B900 have been calculated by using the modulus data of the oriented samples. The observed modulus of isotropic Vectra B900 lies within these bounds and is quite close to the lower bound.