Ultrasonic waves are have considerably high ferquency. They in general denature polymer fragments. Could you please specify the primary intention of using ultrasound to polymer systems?

What is the main objective of using it  onto thermoplastics.?

Thanks Madhumita,

Yes, I know the frequency is high. The potential frequency we plan to use is 20kHz or 30 kHz. The primary purpose of applying ultrasound is to increase the formability, especially bending ability, of  thermoplastics and thermoplastic composites.

In such conditions, chances of polymer degradation are very high and will change the materials property drastically due to change in molecular weight.

for knowing the influence of sonication on a thermoplastic, you can see some published works, Moore group,UIUC. As Omkar said, in general, these linear polymerw will be degraded under sonication.

Thanks, Xinghong and Omkar,

Can you provide one or two of the titles of the published research from the Moore group, please.

You can see this review paper: May, P.A.; Moore, J.S. "Polymer mechanochemistry: techniques to generate molecular force via elongational flows". Chem. Soc. Rev. 2013, 42, 7497. DOI: 10.1039/C2CS35463B.

Xinghong,

Thanks so much for the information. I had a quick look of that paper. However, I believed that cavitation, bubble collapsing and scission effect on the covalent bonds are happening in a liquid state. Do you know whether these effects will also be valid when a solid polymer material is subjecting an ultrasonic irradiation?