The 20th Century World has been transformed by the discovery and use of plastics. Today plastic materials are used in a wide variety of applications, from building and construction to packaging, from sports equipment to transportation. The vast number of plastics materials discovered over the past 40 years and their wide range of properties make them uniquely suited to a very broad spectrum of applications. This combination of the successful utilisation of the materials and the number of types of material available has led to the growth of an array of technical terms within the field. The Dictionary is intended as a reference tool for readers to negotiate these terms.
The main part of the Technical Dictionary of Plastics Materials presents a comprehensive set of extended definitions of technical terms relating to all facts of the materials aspect of plastics technology. The definitions cover the nature of plastics materials, their composition (including relevent non-polymeric componants and additives, such as stabilisers, fillers, colourants, etc), their properties (including methods of property determination, testing, and evaluation), their applications, and their handling and behaviour in processing. In many cases reference is given to the relevant technical standards from the International (ISO), British (BSI), and American (ASTM) standards.
In addition to the main part of the Dictionary containing the definitions there are two further sections. The first gives explanations of the abbreviated terms (letter symbols) used for the parent polymer and for the other constituents of plastics materials, while the second identifies the trade names of a number of plastics materials and their components.