Formulators of curable acrylic materials are challenged with brittleness. This inherent limitation of acrylic chemistry creates the need for new toughening solutions. Formally, the term toughness refers to the ability of a material to absorb energy or stress and plastically deform without fracturing. It is represented as the area under a tensile stress-strain curve.
An acrylic part can experience stress from external sources such as bending, twisting, compression, or stretching. The stress can also come from internal forces, such as shrinkage stress during polymerization or from a mismatch in thermal expansion coefficients of blended materials.