Mechanical and Thermal Characterisation of Polymer Films Exposed to Filling Products

Abstract: Knowledge on how polymeric materials changes or is affected when exposed to products is of interest and importance for many commercial applications. Understanding the product interaction on packaging materials is the key to preventing errors and increasing the quality of products. At Tetra Pak®, product packaging is created to make food and drink safe and accessible everywhere. Therefore, packaging solutions for products must be constantly developed and improved in order to meet customer needs. Today’s packaging contains many different polymeric materials and it does not look like it will change in the near future. Therefore, it is of importance to find an experimental working method to test and perform simulations, that are as close as possible to real behaviour of the material. In this thesis, several experimental methods have been used to study the interaction between different products on low density polyethylene. Methods such as Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS), tensile tests, thickness measurement, product uptake and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) have been used to study the interaction with products at Tetra Pak® and LTH. From the experimental tests, it was difficult to observe large difference in crystallinity and mechanical properties in the short period of the experiment. However, large differences could be seen in the thickness variation, which may be important to look into in the future as it may have a major impact on test results.