Biodegradable plastics can make an important contribution to the struggle against increasing environmental pollution through plastics. However, biodegradability is a material property that is influenced by many factors. This review provides an overview of the main environmental conditions in which biodegradation takes place and then presents the degradability of numerous polymers. Polylactide (PLA), which is already available on an industrial scale, and the polyhydroxyalkanoates polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) and polyhydroxybutyrate-co-valerate (PHBV), which are among the few plastics that have been proven to degrade in seawater, will be discussed in detail, followed by a summary of the degradability of further petroleum-, cellulose-, starch-, protein- and CO₂-based biopolymers and some naturally occurring polymers.

The miscibility and phase separation of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) have already been investigated using various methods. However, these methods have limitations that often result in inconsistent characterization. Consequently, the reasons for the dependence of miscibility on composition as well as on processing temperature have not yet been proved. The phase separation of PMMA/SAN blends was therefore investigated for the first time using a novel technique, nanoscale AFM-IR. It couples nanoscale atomic force microscopy (AFM) with infrared (IR) spectroscopy. Therefore, the phase morphology can be chemically identified and precisely classified within the nm-regime. The PMMA/SAN blends, on the other hand, were analyzed of their changes in morphology under different thermal treatments. It was possible to visualize and define the phase separation, as well as dependence of the miscibility on the mixing ratio. In the miscible domain, no two individual phases could be detected down to the nanometer range. It was shown that with increasing temperature, the morphology changes and two different phases are formed, where the phase boundaries can be sharply defined. The onset of these changes could be identified at temperatures of about 100 °C.

Stiffness anisotropy is a natural consequence of a fibrous structure of composite materials. The effect of anisotropy can be two-fold: it is highly desirable in some cases to assure a proper material response, while it might be even harmful for the applications based on “isotropic” composite materials. To provide a controllable flexibility in material architecture by corresponding fibre alignment, the methodologies for the precise non-destructive evaluation of elastic anisotropy and the fibre orientation are required. The tasks of monitoring the anisotropy and assessing the fibre fields in composites are analyzed by using the two types of ultrasonic waves suitable for regular plate-shaped composite profiles. In the plate wave approach, the effect of “dispersion of anisotropy” has been shown to make the wave velocity anisotropy to be a function of frequency. As a result, the in-plane velocity pattern measured at a certain frequency is affected by the difference in the wave structure, which activates different elasticity against the background of intrinsic material anisotropy. Phase velocity anisotropy and its frequency dependence provide a frequency variation of the beam steering angle for plate waves (dispersion of beam steering). In strongly anisotropic composite materials, the beam steering effect is shown to provide a strong focusing of ultrasonic energy (phonon focusing). For bulk shear waves, the orthotropic composite anisotropy causes the effect of acoustic birefringence. The birefringent acoustic field provides information on stiffness anisotropy which can be caused by internal stresses, texture, molecular or/and fibre orientation. On this basis, a simple experimental technique is developed and applied for mapping of fibre orientation in composite materials. Various modes of acoustic birefringence are analyzed and applied to assessing the fibre fields in injection moulding composites and to identify the fibre lay-ups in multiply materials. The birefringence pattern is also shown to be sensitive and applicable to characterizing impact- and mechanical stress-induced damage in composites.

A new version of an acoustic emission mode which is different from its traditional counterpart is discussed in view of applications for nondestructive testing. It is based on the effect of acoustic waves generation from the defect area in ambient air by local standing wave vibration developed in this area at the defect resonant frequency. Another approach which does not require preliminary knowledge of local defect-resonance frequency is one that uses wideband acoustic activation by a noise-like input signal. The acoustic emission field from the defect area is a “fingerprint” of the radiation source, and thus is applicable to defect detection and imaging. This enables the use of commercial microphone scanning for detecting and imaging various defects in composites. An improvement in the acoustic-emission scanning mode based on a multiple-axis robot is studied to applications to complex shape components. A rapid, full-field imaging of the acoustic-emission field is implemented by means of an array of microphones (acoustic camera). Numerous case studies validate the potential of the resonant acoustic-emission modes for integration in the defect imaging system based on inexpensive, fully acoustic instrumental components.

During the production of fiber-reinforced plastics using resin transfer molding (RTM), various characteristic defects and flaws can occur, such as fiber displacement and fiber waviness. Particularly in high-pressure RTM (HP-RTM), fiber misalignments are generated during infiltration by local peaks in the flow rate, leading to a significant reduction in the mechanical properties. To minimize or avoid this effect, the manufacturing process must be well controlled. Simulative approaches allow for a basic design of the mold filling process; however, due to the high number of influencing variables, the real behavior cannot be exactly reproduced. The focus of this work is on flow front monitoring in an HP-RTM mold using phased array ultrasonic testing. By using an established non-destructive testing instrument, the effort required for integration into the manufacturing process can be significantly reduced. For this purpose, investigations were carried out during the production of test specimens composed of glass fiber-reinforced polyurethane resin. Specifically, a phased array ultrasonic probe was used to record individual line scans over the form filling time. Taking into account the specifications of the probe used in these experiments, an area of 48.45 mm was inspected with a spatial resolution of 0.85 mm derived from the pitch. Due to the aperture that had to be applied to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, an averaging of the measured values similar to a moving average over a window of 6.8 mm had to be considered. By varying the orientation of the phased array probe and therefore the orientation of the line scans, it is possible to determine the local flow velocities of the matrix system during mold filling. Furthermore, process simulation studies with locally varying fiber volume contents were carried out. Despite the locally limited measuring range of the monitoring method presented, conclusions about the global flow behavior in a large mold can be drawn by comparing the experimentally determined results with the process simulation studies. The agreement between the measurement and simulation was thus improved by around 70%.

The naturally diffusive heat flow in solids often results in differences in surface temperatures. Active thermography (AT) exploits such differences to gain information on the internal structure, morphology, or geometry of technical components or biological specimens. In contrast to sound or light waves, thermal waves are lossy; consequently, it is difficult to interpret measured 2D temperature fields. Most AT evaluation methods are based on 1D approaches, and measured 3D heat fluxes are frequently not considered, which is why edges, small features, or gradients are often blurred. Herein, we present a method for reducing the local temperature gradients at feature areas and minimizing the induced lateral heat flux in optical lock-in thermography (LT) measurements through spatial- and temporal-structured heating. The vanishing lateral gradients convert the problem into a 1D problem, which can be adequately solved by the LT approach. The proposed compensation method can bypass the blind frequency of LT and make the inspection largely independent of the excitation frequency. Furthermore, the edge sharpness and separability of features are improved, ultimately improving the feature-detection efficiency.