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The usefulness of any material, including polymer blends, depends on its degradability and durability. The blend composition can significantly affect the degradative behavior of a polymer blend and can differ from the degradation routes of the pure components since the interactions among different species in the blends during degradation, and among the degradation products, can occur. These reactions can lead either to an acceleration of the degradation rate or to a stabilizing effect in comparison with the pure components. Thus, the additive rule cannot be often applied in case of degradation of polymer blends and, therefore, it is difficult to predict the degradative behavior of a polymer blend on the base of the properties of pure components. This review aims to report the status of the research on degradation of polymer blends focusing on thermal, thermomechanical and photo-oxidative degradation.

Polyamide/polyolefin blends are of scientific and technological interest but, on the other hand, the different chemical nature of the two components makes them incompatible, resulting in unsatisfactory physical properties and making compatibilization necessary. In particular, although the two components are ductile, the binary blends can show brittle behaviour. It is also known that the effect of the elongational flow (and then of the induced orientation) on polymer blends is a decrease of elongation at break with increase of the degree of orientation. In this work, the effect of orientation on the mechanical properties of a low density polyethylene/polyamide 6 incompatible blend was investigated. An unexpected, orientation-induced brittle/ductile transition has been found, and interpreted in terms of microstructural changes, involving the orientation of the matrix macromolecules and of the dispersed phase particles.

The recent increasing interest towards biodegradable polymers has favoured the investigation on these systems, showing also their limits. On the other hand, the success achieved by nanocomposites has fostered the search for new systems where the polymer matrix is biodegradable. The final properties can depend on a number of factors, including the biodegradable polymer used as well as the nanosized filler, their mutual compatibility, the filler dispersion and the processing conditions. In this work, nanocomposites based on a starch-derived matrix and three different lamellar silicates were prepared, and the effects of the elongational flow on the dispersion, the improvement of intercalation/exfoliation and the possible aligning of the nanosilicate particles along the flow direction was investigated. Rheological, morphological and tensile tests showed that the properties were significantly different upon varying the compatibility between the polymer matrix and the nanofiller, as well as the draw ratio and therefore the orientation degree.

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is one of the most used commodity polymers, especially for food and beverage applications, and its recycling is of great importance because of the possible use in the textile and construction industries. On the other hand, the interest in biodegradable polymers has led, in recent years, to the use of materials such as poly(lactic acid) (PLA) also in the food and beverage industry. The presence of small amounts of PLA in the PET waste can significantly affect the post-consumer recycling process. In this work, the effect of the presence of small amounts of PLA on the recycling of PET bottles is investigated by rheological, mechanical, morphological and thermogravimetric analysis. The results indicate that this presence can significantly affect the rheological properties under non-isothermal elongational flow, while the mechanical properties were considerably affected only in some circumstances and the thermal stability was not significantly modified.