Novel Approach to the Ultrasonic Degradation of Polymers: Development of a General Kinetic Equation

Abstract

In order to develop a general kinetic equation for the ultrasonic degradation of polymers, the general applicability of the common kinetic equations is discussed. The common ultrasonic-kinetic equations for polymers are used to fit original data collected from all available literature (over 366 experimental data points). The fitting accuracy of the kinetic equation is evaluated by the residual standard deviation. The fitting results indicate that the first-order equation and second-order equations are the most accurate and can replace other kinetic equations. Based on this, a general kinetic equation for the ultrasonic degradation of polymers is proposed, $-\frac{d{M}_t}{dt}=k{(M_t-M_{\lim })}^n$ where n = 1 or 2, i.e. when n = 1, it becomes a first-order dynamic equation; when n = 2, it is a second-order dynamic equation.