Influence of heat treatment on the bending behaviour of LLDPE monofilaments

It is known that artificial turf surfaces based on LLDPE monofilaments have the potential to replace natural turf surfaces used for several sport surfaces. Even though the production parameters have a strong influence on the behaviour of monofilaments and indirectly on the final product, the effect of heat treatment at different stages of the production lines is not studied in detail. Therefore, the influence of heat treatment during the production of monofilaments was investigated. This investigation includes a study of the mechanical properties such as tensile testing and bending behaviour and morphological analyses by employing DSC measurements. The results show that the applied heat treatment has a strong influence on the bending behaviour even though the classical studied morphology structures do not show significant changes. Heat treatment influences quite importantly the characteristics of the non-crystalline part of the monofilaments and results in better long-term properties, such as resilience, deformation recovery and fibrillation resistance.