Fabrication and mechanical characterization of horse hair (HH) reinforced polypropylene (PP) composites

Abstract

In the last few years natural fiber reinforced polymer composite materials have been developing very rapidly in the field of materials development, due to various advantages such as their biodegradability, low cost, light weight, high specific strength, easily machinability and eco friendly nature etc. In present work animals fibers (Hair) were used as the reinforcing material and polypropylene (PP) as the resin. Composites materials were fabricated by using compression moulding techniques. Content of horse hair (HH) was varied from 0, 10%, 20% and 30% respectively by fixing the fiber (hair) length. Experimental results show that mechanical properties such as tensile strength, flexural strength, impact strength increases 20% content of HH and after that a further increase in the content of HH, mechanical properties are negatively affected but water absorption continues to increases with the increase in the content of HH.