PET – Material Table – Applications – Price

About PET

Polyethylene terephthalate, commonly abbreviated PET, PETE, is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in fibres for clothing, containers for liquids and foods. Polyethylene terephthalate polyester is a hard, stiff, strong, dimensionally stable material that absorbs very little water.

Summary

Name	PET
Phase at STP	solid
Density	1350 kg/m3
Ultimate Tensile Strength	150 MPa
Yield Strength	40 MPa
Young’s Modulus of Elasticity	9 GPa
Brinell Hardness	20 BHN
Melting Point	267 °C
Thermal Conductivity	0.3 W/mK
Heat Capacity	1250 J/g K
Price	0.8 $/kg

Composition of PET

PET consists of polymerized units of the monomer ethylene terephthalate, with repeating (C10H8O4) units. PET is commonly recycled, and has the number “1” as its resin identification code (RIC).

Applications of PET

There are tremendous commercial applications for PET: as an injection-molding-grade material, for blow-molded bottles, and for oriented films. The majority of the world’s PET production is for synthetic fibres (in excess of 60%), with bottle production accounting for about 30% of global demand. In the context of textile applications, PET is referred to by its common name, polyester, whereas the acronym PET is generally used in relation to packaging.

Mechanical Properties of PET

Strength of PET

In mechanics of materials, the strength of a material is its ability to withstand an applied load without failure or plastic deformation. Strength of materials basically considers the relationship between the external loads applied to a material and the resulting deformation or change in material dimensions. In designing structures and machines, it is important to consider these factors, in order that the material selected will have adequate strength to resist applied loads or forces and retain its original shape.

Strength of a material is its ability to withstand this applied load without failure or plastic deformation. For tensile stress, the capacity of a material or structure to withstand loads tending to elongate is known as ultimate tensile strength (UTS). Yield strength or yield stress is the material property defined as the stress at which a material begins to deform plastically whereas yield point is the point where nonlinear (elastic + plastic) deformation begins. In case of tensional stress of a uniform bar (stress-strain curve), the Hooke’s law describes behaviour of a bar in the elastic region. The Young’s modulus of elasticity is the elastic modulus for tensile and compressive stress in the linear elasticity regime of a uniaxial deformation and is usually assessed by tensile tests.

See also: Strength of Materials

Ultimate Tensile Strength of PET

Ultimate tensile strength of PET is 150 MPa.

Yield Strength of PET

Yield strength of PET is 40 MPa.

Modulus of Elasticity of PET

The Young’s modulus of elasticity of PET is 9 GPa.

Hardness of PET

In materials science, hardness is the ability to withstand surface indentation (localized plastic deformation) and scratching. Brinell hardness test is one of indentation hardness tests, that has been developed for hardness testing. In Brinell tests, a hard, spherical indenter is forced under a specific load into the surface of the metal to be tested.

The Brinell hardness number (HB) is the load divided by the surface area of the indentation. The diameter of the impression is measured with a microscope with a superimposed scale. The Brinell hardness number is computed from the equation:

Brinell hardness of PET is approximately 20 BHN (converted).

See also: Hardness of Materials

Thermal Properties of PET

PET – Melting Point

Melting point of PET is 267 °C.

Note that, these points are associated with the standard atmospheric pressure. In general, melting is a phase change of a substance from the solid to the liquid phase. The melting point of a substance is the temperature at which this phase change occurs. The melting point also defines a condition in which the solid and liquid can exist in equilibrium. For various chemical compounds and alloys, it is difficult to define the melting point, since they are usually a mixture of various chemical elements.

PET – Thermal Conductivity

Thermal conductivity of PET is 0.3 W/(m·K).

The heat transfer characteristics of a solid material are measured by a property called the thermal conductivity, k (or λ), measured in W/m.K. It is a measure of a substance’s ability to transfer heat through a material by conduction. Note that Fourier’s law applies for all matter, regardless of its state (solid, liquid, or gas), therefore, it is also defined for liquids and gases.

The thermal conductivity of most liquids and solids varies with temperature. For vapors, it also depends upon pressure. In general:

Most materials are very nearly homogeneous, therefore we can usually write k = k (T). Similar definitions are associated with thermal conductivities in the y- and z-directions (ky, kz), but for an isotropic material the thermal conductivity is independent of the direction of transfer, kx = ky = kz = k.

PET – Specific Heat

Specific heat of PET is 1250 J/g K.

Specific heat, or specific heat capacity, is a property related to internal energy that is very important in thermodynamics. The intensive properties c_v and c_p are defined for pure, simple compressible substances as partial derivatives of the internal energy u(T, v) and enthalpy h(T, p), respectively:

where the subscripts v and p denote the variables held fixed during differentiation. The properties c_v and c_p are referred to as specific heats (or heat capacities) because under certain special conditions they relate the temperature change of a system to the amount of energy added by heat transfer. Their SI units are J/kg K or J/mol K.

Properties and prices of other materials

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