Tensile strength and thermal behavior of jute fibre reinforced polypropylene laminate composite

Abstract

In the current era, sustainability and biodegradability are two necessary terms, which are related to the composite materials. Due to environmental sustainability use of the natural fibres as reinforcement is increased in composites for various applications as compared to glass fibre. In this research work, jute fibres are used as reinforcement due to the low cost and Polypropylene (PP) as matrix due to its ease of availability. The novelty of the work is to study the effect of plying of PP sheets on the tensile strength and thermal behavior of PP-Jute laminate composites by using simple hot press machine. Effect of polymer degradation due to repeated thermal processing on the mechanical performance of composite is also investigated. In this work the effect of the fibre cut length (3 cm, 6 cm and 9 cm), number of plies (1, 2 and 4) and fibre loading (0%, 5% and 10%) is studied. The structural, thermal and mechanical properties of the composites are investigated using X-Ray diffraction, tensile test, DSC and dynamic mechanical analysis. It is observed that the mechanical properties of composite improved up to 2 plies and deteriorate thereafter. Best results are obtained for 2-plied composites at all levels of fibre loading. Crystallinity percentage is reduced while crystallite size is increased in case of composites as compared to neat PP sheet. Jute-PP composites could be used for various applications in automobile industries, building components such as partitioning panels and similar applications.