Analysis of variance of injection moulding process parameters and clay particles size effects on impact strength, shrinkage and warpage of polyethylene/kaolin clay composites

Abstract A correlation effect between particle size of kaolin clay and injection moulding process parameters on impact strength, shrinkage and warpage of high-density polyethylene/kaolin clay (HDPE/KC) composites was carried out using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Kaolin clay with particle sizes of < 75, 75–106 and 106–150 μm was used. The process parameters that were taken into consideration were injection temperature, packing pressure and packing time. In general, experimental results showed that the impact strength and shrinkage of the HDPE/KC composites clearly depended on the injection temperature. However, no clear dependency of the warpage on the injection temperature was observed. Furthermore, clay particle size showed to have an influence only on the shrinkage of the composites, where smaller clay particle size led to injected composite parts with relatively less shrinkage. ANOVA showed that the effect of injection temperature on shrinkage of composites containing clay particle sizes of < 75 and 106–150 μm was statistically significant (p = 0.01 and 0.04, respectively). However, the effect of injection temperature on shrinkage of the composite made with clay having particle sizes of 75–106 μm was not significant (p = 0.07). ANOVA also indicated that the injection temperature effect on the impact strength of composites that contain clays with particle sizes of < 75 μm and 75–106 μm was significant (p = 0.03 and p = 0.01, respectively), whereas the injection temperature effect on the impact strength of the composite containing clay with a particle size of 106–150 μm was not significant (p = 0.17). Contrary to shrinkage and impact strength, the effect of the studied parameters on the warpage was not statistically significant, which was in good agreement with the experimental observations