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Radiation and Polymer Chemistry Laboratory, Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology, Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 2Department of Chemistry, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 3PP &PDC, Bangladesh Council
of Scientific and Industrial Research, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
E-mail: makhan.inst@gmail.com, mjakhan_edu@yahoo.com
Received September 2nd, 2010; revised September 23rd, 2010; accepted October 6th, 2010.
ABSTRACT
Composites based on jute fabrics and polypropylene was fabricated by heat-press molding technique. The mechanical
properties of the composites such as tensile strength, tensile modulus, bending strength, bending modulus and impact
strength were measured in dependence of fiber contents. In order to improve fiber-matrix interaction, jute fabrics were
treated with aqueous solutions of K2Cr2O7 (0.005-0.05% w/v). Composite prepared with 0.02% K2Cr2O7 treated jute
fabrics showed the highest values of the mechanical properties. Thermogravimetric (TG/DTG) data of PP, jute fabrics
and composites showed that thermal degradation temperatures of composites shifted to higher temperature regions
compared to PP or jute fabrics. Treatment of jute fabrics improved the thermal stability of the composite considerably.
Scanning electron microscopic images of tensile fractured sides of untreated and treated composites illustrated that
better fiber-matrix interfacial interaction occurred in treated composite. The relative tendency of water absorption of
both untreated and treated composites was also explored.
Keywords: Composites, Jute fabric, Polypropylene, Mechanical properties, Thermal properties
1. Introduction
Environment-friendly and cost effective composites have
recently been received considerable attention among the
scientists. The use of man-made fibers (such as, glass,
carbon) as reinforcements in composites is now critically
considered due to environmental concern though they
have possessed excellent mechanical and thermal properties, and durability. These properties make difficult to
carry out suitable disposal processing. For example, incineration of discarding glass fiber based composite generates a lot of black smoke and bad odors and often creates damage to incinerator by fusion of glass fibers. Reclamation processing generates also a large environmental
load; since synthetic fibers are not decomposed easily.
To avert this problem, the use of natural fibers based
composites is increasing continuously. Natural fibers
have some advantages over man-made fibers in that they
are cheap, highly available and renewable, with low density and high specific properties as well as they are biodegradable and less abrasive [1]. Natural fibers such as
Copyright 2010 SciRes.
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2. Experimental
2.1. Materials
Jute fabrics (Hessian cloth) were supplied by SADAT
Textile Industries Ltd., Dhaka, Bangladesh. Potassium
dichromate (K2Cr2O7) was received from Merck, Germany and Polypropylene (PP) pellets (trade name: Cosmoplene) from The Polyolefin Company (Singapore) Pte.
Ltd. The materials were used as received.
351
Wup ( % ) =
W f Wi
Wi
100%
Tensile and bending modulus (GPa)
352
Where,
Wup ( % ) = percent water uptake of the sample
Wi = weight of the sample before immersion in water
W f = weight of the sample after immersion in water
3.5
3
2.5
2
TM
BM
1.5
1
0.5
The fiber volume fraction influences the mechanical properties of the composites. Tensile (TS) and bending (BS)
strengths of the composites were measured as a function
of jute content and the results are shown in Figure 1. Jute
content in the composite varies from 28 to 52% w/v. It is
observed that TS and BS of the composites increase up
to 45% jute content after that strengths of the composites
decrease. The similar observation is also recorded for
tensile modulus (TM) and bending modulus (BM) of the
composites (Figure 2). The investigation reveals that 45%
jute content performs the best of mechanical properties.
The values of TS, BS, TM and BM were recorded as 52
MPa, 63 MPa, 1.03 GPa and 3.27 GPa respectively. The
highest values of mechanical properties exhibited by
45% fiber content composite may be explained in terms
of orientation and homogeneity of fibers within the matrix. At this stage, fibers get maximum level of orientation and mixed homogeneously within the matrix. When
load is applied, stress is uniformly distributed among the
fibers. As a result, mechanical properties of the compo-
0
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
70
13
60
Elongation at break (%)
65
55
50
45
40
TS
35
12
11
10
BS
30
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
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353
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
TM
BM
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
0
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
80
24
70
Impact strength (kJ/ m2)
75
65
60
55
50
TS
45
22
20
18
BS
40
16
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
Concentration of K2 Cr 2 O7 (% w/v)
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
354
12
11
10
9
5
0
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
Concentration of K2 Cr 2O 7 (% w/v)
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355
Figure 10. Thermograms of (a) control and (b) 0.02% potassium dichromate treated jute fabrics -PP composites.
(Upper part-TG, middle part-DTA and bottom part-DTG
thermogram).
show that maximum degradation temperatures of untreated composite for first and second stage are 365.1C
and 426.7C respectively and those for treated composite
are 363.9 C and 448.0C. From these findings it can be
realized that maximum degradation temperature of untreated (365.0C) and treated (363.0C) jute fabrics remains almost unchanged in the composites. At second
stage, the maximum degradation temperature of neat PP
(413.8C) is shifted to higher temperature regions by
12.9C and 34.2C for untreated (426.7C) and treated
(448.0C) composites respectively. It indicates that
treatment of jute fabrics with 0.02% K2Cr2O7 improves
the thermal stability of the composite to a large extent
which justifies the development of strong fiber-matrix
interface in treated composite.
356
(b)
4. Conclusions
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10
4
0
10
20
30
40
Time (days)
Control Composite
treated composite
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357
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