{"id":817,"date":"2018-10-03T13:47:12","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T13:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/?p=817"},"modified":"2018-11-23T13:48:02","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T13:48:02","slug":"what-is-environmental-stress-cracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/what-is-environmental-stress-cracking\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Environmental Stress Cracking?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Environmental stress cracking (ESC) is not the result of the continual battle that the plastics industry has in convincing environmentalists and politicians that plastics can be the solution to environmental problems and not the cause.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>ESC is the consequence of a combination of mechanical stress and exposure to an \u2018aggressive\u2019 chemical.\u00a0The mechanical stress can arise from service loading or from internal strain created during the moulding process. The \u2018aggressive\u2019 chemical can be crudely classified as a poor solvent or non-solvent for the thermoplastic material.\u00a0 The ESC first manifests itself as minute cracks as the strain is relieved by the chemical. The cracks will eventually grow and lead to catastrophic failure.\u00a0As with many polymer properties, time, temperature and even UV exposure can all be contributory factors.<\/p>\n<p>I recall one example where blow-moulded PVC sweet jars literally disintegrated in the warehouse, leading to the collapse of stacks of jars of sweets.\u00a0 Because the same jars had been performing well for years, the customer blamed the moulder for a \u2018bad\u2019 batch.\u00a0\u00a0 It transpired that the customer had added to the sweet recipe a new vegetable oil, which just happened to be aggressive to the PVC, a fact that was able to be demonstrated by laboratory tests to convince the customer.<\/p>\n<p>My next blog will look at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hardiepolymers.com\/knowledge\/can-environmental-stress-cracking-be-avoided\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">how we can avoid environmental stress cracking<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This Environmental stress cracking article was written by Dr. Charlie Geddes for Hardie Polymers.<\/p>\n<p>For more of Charlie\u2019s blogs why not also read more of our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hardiepolymers.com\/knowledge\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">knowledge base articles<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>For information on all the specified grades that we can offer please contact us today or try our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hardiepolymers.com\/polymers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">polymer search<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-18552\" src=\"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/hardie-polymers-compressor.png\" alt=\"Hardie Polymers logo\" width=\"200\" height=\"45\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Hardie Polymers<\/em><br \/>\n<em>0141 952 1900<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hardiepolymers.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Website<\/em><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:hello@hardiepolymers.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Email<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Environmental stress cracking (ESC) is not the result of the continual battle that the plastics industry has in convincing environmentalists and politicians that plastics can be the solution to environmental problems and not the cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101012,"featured_media":819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[343,270,342],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plastikcity-blogs","tag-environmental-stress-cracking","tag-hardie-polymers","tag-stress-cracking","post-preview"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101012"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plastikcity.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}