Abstract:
At present, natural fiber reinforced polymer matrix composites have received wide
attention of the researchers from all over the world because of their outstanding
advantages of environment friendliness, biodegradability, recyclability, costeffectiveness,
and comparable physico-mechanical properties. Among various natural
fibers easily available to human beings, water hyacinth (WH) is one of the cheapest
fibers which have not been systematically explored so far, to the knowledge of the
author, as reinforcing materials of composites. The present study focuses on the
manufacturing of WH fiber reinforced polypropylene (PP) composites with a view to
investigating and evaluating their physico-mechanical and thermal properties. The WH
fibers and PP were melt-mixed with a single screw extruder. This mixture was used to
manufacture composites with an injection molding machine.
Various mechanical properties such as tensile strength and stiffness, flexural strength
and stiffness, and Charpy impact strength were measured by standard procedures and
results were analyzed. Water absorption property was evaluated for 24 hours immersion
in distilled water. Thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), differential thermal analysis
(DTA), and derivative thermal gravimetric (DTG) analyses were carried out in order to
evaluate the thermal properties of composites. Scanning electronic microscopic (SEM)
images were analyzed to understand the interfacial bonding between WH fibers and PP
matrix for both the raw and chemically treated fibers. Fourier transform infrared ray
(FTIR) analysis was carried out to see the effect of chemical treatment on the change of
molecular structures (hydrophilic to hydrophobic) of WH fibers.
It was found that all the mechanical properties except tensile strength were
satisfactorily improved for chemically treated WH-PP composites in comparison with
those of raw WH-PP composites. Also, thermal stability of the chemically treated WHPP
composites was much better than those of raw WH-PP composites. However, water
absorption property was almost the same for both the chemically treated and raw WHPP
composites. Further, the water absorption increases with the increase of fiber
loading while the mechanical properties except tensile strength were improved with the
increase of fiber loading.
