Environmental stress crazing in thermoplastics.

As polymers find their way into new and more demanding engineering applications, their resistance to failure becomes a critical consideration. In many of these applications, environmental stress crazing (ESC) is the life limiting mode of failure. In this brief review, the molecular mechanism and the environmental criteria for ESC are discussed, as well as various approaches to material optimization and testing. ESC of glassy polymers, polyethylene, and nylon is discussed in this context. This review is being written as a chapter in a handbook to be published by ASM titled "Engineering Plastics".