These specialty thermoplastic copolymers are inherently flexible, resilient, tough, and show excellent resistance to ozone and environmental stress cracking. Typical properties of representative grades are shown in Table 1. Flexibility, resilience, toughness and transparency increase with increasing vinyl acetate content. Within each grade series, that is, at a given vinyl acetate level, flexibility and toughness are also influenced by melt index.
Flexibility is retained over a broad temperature range.
Compression set can be improved by cross-linking. Resilience, like flexibility and toughness, increases with vinyl acetate content. For resins in the melt index range below 30, toughness increases with vinyl acetate content. They can also be processed using conventional rubber processing techniques such as Banbury, two-roll milling and compression molding. Screws normally used for processing low density polyethylene are satisfactory.