Thermal cracking occurs in the plastic packaging materials due to the presence of moisturized micro-cavities in the material.The moisture resident in the micro-cavities gives rise to the internal vapor pressure that drives the thermal expansion of micro-cavities as temperature rises.The plastic packaging materials are considered a class of thermo-hyperelastic materials,thus allowing the micro-cavities to thermally expand to the substantial extent before the cracking failure.The micro-cavities can be moisture-abundant(i.e.,wet) or substantially dry when cracking occurs.Cracking appears to be almost certain in the presence of wet cavities.The possibility of cracking in dry cavities turns to be two-sided:when the initial volume fraction of the micro-cavities is relatively small,cracking cannot occur in the dry cavities regardless of the phase transition temperature;when the initial cavity volume fraction is relatively large,cracking tends to occur in the dry cavities especially when the phase transition temperature is large.Because of the two-sided cracking possibility,the dry-cavity cracking mode presents a scenario that might reveal the mechanism of popcorning-type cracking failure in plastic packaging materials.
