Manufacturing Technique and Mechanical Property Evaluations of Polypropylene/Short Coir/Short Glass Fiber Wood Plastic Composites

Abstract

This study uses a single screw extruder to make short coir (SC), an agricultural waste, high-strength short glass fiber (SGF), and polypropylene (PP) into pellets, which are then made into wood plastic composites (WPC) on an injection machine. During the process, maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (PP-g-MA) is used as a coupling agent to improve the interfacial adhesion between coir and PP as well as between SGF and PP. A tensile strength test, flexural strength test, and Izod impact strength test are performed on the samples to examine the mechanical properties. The experiment results show that when the content of SGF increases from 3 wt% to 12 wt%, the tensile strength increases from 26.08 MPa to 36.68 MPa, and flexural strength increases from 36.01 MPa to 49.91 MPa, but the Izod impact strength decreases from 286.16 J/m to 218.14 J/m. In addition, the addition of 2 wt% of PP-g-MA improves the interfacial adhesion between matrices (PP) and reinforcement (SC or SGF), thereby fortifying the mechanical properties of the composites.