On the miscibility of PVDF/PMMA polymer blends: Thermodynamics, experimental and numerical investigations

In this paper the miscibility of PVDF/PMMA blends was studied using different approaches: experimental tests, thermodynamics and numerical simulation. The first part of this study is devoted to the experimental work and aims to investigate the miscibility of blends by different experimental techniques. First, blends of PVDF/PMMA at different ratios were compounded and characterized using physico-chemical and rheological methods. The effect of PMMA content on the crystallization behavior of PVDF in the blend was experimentally investigated. At a second stage, the thermodynamic interaction parameter of Flory-Huggins was evaluated as a function of the PMMA proportion in the blends based on the experimental data related to the PVDF melting point and enthalpy. Besides, a numerical method has been developed using Fluent Ansys software to describe the coalescence phenomenon under different scenarios of viscosity ratios and grain sizes of polymers. The confrontation of the code simulation results with the experimental and thermodynamic approaches has shown a good agreement for reproducing the behavior of miscible polymers as well as their aptitude to form a homogeneous blend.