Abstract
Some new ideas are advanced on the selection and qualification of PE materials for use in fittings for PE pipe systems. These are designed to address the problem of ensuring that the fitting does not fail by slow crack growth during the lifetime of the pipe. It has been found that FEA studies of the local stresses in fittings correlate well with observed failure behaviour and this information can be usefully employed to predict long term slow crack growth behaviour. Furthermore, a useful DSC-based procedure is proposed for characterising crack growth resistant polyethylenes.
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