Explore polymers
Compare polyethylene grades, inspect repeated tensile measurements and analyse your own stress–strain CSV with units, test conditions and sources.
Start with a flexible bag and a rigid bottle, then compare named LDPE and HDPE grades. A repeat unit identifies the chemistry; material behaviour also depends on chain structure and processing. The pictured applications do not identify the formulations of particular products.
Commercial grade properties
These manufacturer typical values describe named grades, not entire polymer families or specification limits. Matching test standards do not establish matching conditions: tensile speed, test temperature, specimen dimensions and conditioning are absent from the cited tables.
Lupolen 2420H · LDPE
LyondellBasell. Blown and cast film; bags, pouches and packaging film.
- Density
- 0.924 g/cm³ (ISO 1183-1)
- Tensile modulus
- 260 MPa (ISO 527-1, -2)
- Yield stress
- 11 MPa (ISO 527-1, -2)
- Yield strain
- Not reported
Lupolen 5021DX · HDPE
LyondellBasell. Extrusion blow moulding; consumer bottles, industrial bottles and jerry cans.
- Density
- 0.95 g/cm³ (ISO 1183-1)
- Tensile modulus
- 1000 MPa (ISO 527-1, -2)
- Yield stress
- 25 MPa (ISO 527-1, -2)
- Yield strain
- 9 % (ISO 527-1, -2)
Lupolen 1800H · LDPE
LyondellBasell. Injection moulding, blow moulding and film extrusion; caps, closures and lids.
- Density
- 0.919 g/cm³ (ISO 1183-1)
- Tensile modulus
- 200 MPa (ISO 527-1, -2)
- Yield stress
- 9 MPa (ISO 527-1, -2)
- Yield strain
- Not reported
Repeated tensile experiments
Inspect 10 measured tests of two research HDPE samples from Hu and colleagues. These are different samples from the commercial grades above. Compare stress at a chosen strain and variation across repeat tests; values between recorded points use linear interpolation, with no extrapolation.
- PE 38, research sample 003: Mn 38 kDa; 5 tests; reported break stress 26.1 ± 0.7 MPa and break strain 13 ± 1%. The ± values are sample standard deviations.
- PE 98, research sample 004: Mn 98 kDa; 5 tests; reported break stress 32.7 ± 1.6 MPa and break strain 1640 ± 197%. The ± values are sample standard deviations.
The published strain follows crosshead movement rather than a documented independent extensometer. The area implicit in the exported force/stress values is about 1.25 mm²; the nominal mold dimensions give 1.56 mm². The reason is unreported, so the author-exported stress is retained. Sampling roughly every 0.5 percentage point of strain does not resolve a standard small-strain tensile modulus.
The authors report tests at 10 mm/min with a 10 mm gauge length. Test temperature, humidity, conditioning duration and an ISO/ASTM designation are not reported.
Cornell eCommons dataset · Supporting information, Tables S1 and S6 · Raw data: CC0 1.0 Universal · Provenance, conditions and original-file checksums
Analyse a CSV
Import one loading branch with a header row. Use engineering stress in MPa and strain as percent or a decimal ratio; or force in N and extension in mm with the original cross-sectional area and gauge length. Files are processed in the browser. Teaching examples are labelled synthetic.
Inspect the maximum recorded stress, extension and energy over the recorded range. A chosen interval can be fitted with a free-intercept linear regression; keep the interval, point count and fit limits with the result. Download the analysed CSV or an analysis file containing data, units, settings, source details and your interpretation.
An interval slope is not automatically a tensile modulus; a 0.2% offset intersection is not automatically yield stress. The last recorded point does not by itself establish fracture. The signed area over the recorded range is not automatically toughness to fracture.