Plastics References

Budinski, Kenneth G. (1996) Engineering Materials: Properties and Selection, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs.

Beck, Ronald D. (1980) Plastics Product Design, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York.

Campbell, Paul D.Q. (1996) Plastics Component Design, Industrial Press, Inc., New York.

Dym, Joseph B. (1983) Product Design with Plastics, Industrial Press, Inc., NY.

A great book for engineering design. Chapter 2 provides the meaning of data. Chapter 5 is dedicated to giving all the information you need on the different types of plastic, arranged by generic name. It gives properties, applications, and best of all data tables with the information that you need to do your calculations.

MacDermott, Charles P. and Aroon V. Shenoy (1997) Selecting Thermoplastics for Engineering Applications, Marcel Dekker, Inc., NY.

In this book there are descriptions of what are refered to as "engineering plastics". As in the other books brief summaries are given of the plastic's properties and applications, but also included in MacDermott is a section on ranking and selection of types of plastics. This is very useful because it explains how to use the properties of the plastic to decide which plastic is your best choice.

Ranking of the plastics is done by:

• Resistance to Chemicals and Solvents - effects of the environment on the plastic
• Tensile Strength - ultimate strength of the plastic
• Flexural Modulus - stiffness of the plastic
• Flexural Strength - measure of the amount of stress a material will withstand before it fractures under load (see the ASTM D-790 standard).
• Price - cost per cubic inch
• Creep Modulus/(Apparent Modulus) - When a plastic is subjected to a constant load, it deforms. quickly to a strain roughly predicted by its stress/strain modulus and then continues to deform at a slower rate indefinitely or, if the load is high enough, until rupture occurs. (See Dym., 1983, p.176)

Plastics Handbook (1994), Edited by the Staff of Modern Plastics Magazine. McGraw-Hill, Inc., NY.

This book also gives a simple breakdown of the different types of plastics. For each type, sections on processing, applications, properties and commercial information are given. It is a good source to use if you need information about prices.

Rubin, Irvin I. (1990) Handbook of Plastics & Technology, John Wiley & Sons, NY.

This book gives a basic breakdown of the different types of plastics. Each type has its own chapter, which is only a few pages long and contains subsections such as, description of properties, applications, and advantages/disadvantages.