A Process Classification Number for the Solidification of Crystallizing Materials

A critical number, which one may call a process classification number, has been introduced more than twenty years ago. It has been called the Janeschitz-Kriegl number. It gives the ratio of two times governing the solidification process of a crystallizing material: one for the thermal equilibration and the other for the crystallization process itself. So far, however, this number could not be made operational because of a lack of crystallization kinetics data. This shortcoming could now be cleared away. It turns out that between the values of Jk for HdPE und for i-PS a gap exists of more than six decades.In their behavior all other known industrial polymers lie between these limiting cases.