Surface Structured Polymer Blend Fibers and Their Application in Fiber Reinforced Composite.

Dan Pan,Licheng Wang,Junfen Sun,Long Chen,Siqi Liu,Baozhong Sun

doi:10.3390/ma13194279

Abstract

Melt-spun surface structured fiber could be a large-scale versatile platform for materials with advanced surface function and local properties. Fibers with distinct surface and bulk structures are developed by tailoring the viscosity ratio and blend ratio of polymer component using the melt-spinning method. Spherical bulge and fibril groove structured fibers are obtained in different viscosity ratio and blend ratio systems. The interfacial bonding between fiber and matrix is improved due to the mechanical interlocking between the structured surface and matrix. The low-viscosity second phase stays as a spherical droplet even in high content. The second phase in matched- and high-viscosity ratio cases is deformed into fibril like droplet which causes an in-situ fibration of the second phase in polymer blend fiber with an enhanced mechanical property. This method provides a simple route to developing polymer materials with surface structure and appropriate mechanical properties to apply in textile and polymer fiber-reinforced composite materials.

Highlights

The booming infrastructure activities along “The Belt and Road” line, especially in the areas with an extreme environment like saline-alkali soil, tjaele, island, and high daily temperature variation, require more application of advanced polymer fiber-reinforced composites to overcome the effect of the harsh natural environment on the duration of infrastructure materials
Different microstructures were built on polymer-blend fiber surfaces by the variation of viscosity ratio and blend composition during melt-spinning
The low-viscosity PS phase dispersed as spherical droplets in the PP matrix, leading to spherical bulges on PS/PP fiber surface under the action of the droplets in the PP matrix, leading to spherical bulges on PS/PP fiber surface under the action of the hydrodynamic force

Summary

Introduction

The booming infrastructure activities along “The Belt and Road” line, especially in the areas with an extreme environment like saline-alkali soil, tjaele, island, and high daily temperature variation, require more application of advanced polymer fiber-reinforced composites to overcome the effect of the harsh natural environment on the duration of infrastructure materials. Lots of works have focused on using oxidative, plasma polymerization, gamma radiation, polymer grafting methods to modify the fiber surface, aiming to increase the surface roughness, surface area, and interaction between fibers and matrix [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. These methods still need to solve environmental and process problems.

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Conclusion