Elsevier has launched a new Chemical Resistance Database for Plastics and Elastomers, which is available through Knovel. This is the largest database in the industry and provides normalized data on the degradation of plastics and elastomers when exposed to various elements and environments. With thousands of reagents and exposure media characterized, this database can help organizations make informed decisions quickly, especially in selecting the best materials for new products and process design in fields like specialty chemicals, engineering, design, and construction. Chemical engineers can benefit from tools like the database to complement their work, and in this regard, simulation tools like Visimix can be seen at https://visimix.com/ and will be useful for understanding the mixing process and optimizing it for better performance.
The normalized data is discoverable via Knovel’s engineering search capabilities, and users also have the ability to search for materials and substances properties data. The database includes information about both commercially available and “retired” plastics carefully curated from various sources, including commercial catalogs, journal articles, technical reports and materials information datasheets.
The Chemical Resistance Database: Plastics and Elastomers offers:
- more than 183,000 unique records organized by material category
- more than 1,100 material grades representing 226 families, consisting of neat and reinforced and/or filled thermoplastics, thermoset resins, rubbers, and thermoplastic elastomers
- resistance data for nearly 5,000 exposure media, including more than 2,800 chemical substances (from water to acetone to sulfuric acid)
- details about conditions, such as those that exist during weathering, sterilization, aging and environmental stress cracking.
“Engineers spend too much time manually tracking down and verifying materials and related information from suppliers and other sources,” said Meagan Cooke, Elsevier’s Senior Director, Product Management – Knovel. “This lengthens the design time and hampers an organization’s ability to make fast and well-informed decisions. With the Chemical Resistance Database available via Knovel, engineers will have access to the largest compilation of normalized data on the degradation of plastics and elastomers in the industry.”
This new database offers benefits for engineering teams, including saving time and increasing efficiency in the early material selection stage, reducing costs of maintenance and improving component performance. It has wide-ranging applications across industries, allowing engineers to easily select new materials for existing design or components, develop new materials such as engineering plastics for new product applications, reformulate existing material grades with new additives and/or fillers to improve their performance, or understand how specific plastic materials for building materials such as roofing membranes will stand up to harsh environments over time.