Betelnut fibres as an alternative to glass fibres to reinforce thermoset composites: a comparative study

For the current work, investigations were carried out using treated betelnut fibre-reinforced polyester (T-BFRP) and chopped strand mat glass fibre-reinforced polyester (CSM-GFRP) composites. Results revealed that T-BFRP showed competitive performance of about 1.16%, 17.39% and 4.92% for tensile, flexural and compression tests as compared to the latter. Through tribological performance tests, T-BFRP composite showed superiority in wear for the dry and wet tests of about 98% and 90.8% while the friction coefficient was reduced by about 9.4% and 80% respectively. The interface temperature was lower by about 17% for T-BFRP composite subjected to dry test as compared to CSM-GFRP. SEM analysis revealed that the brittle effects observed on glass fibres during the tribo test enhanced the material removal rate which increased the thermo-mechanical effects at the rubbing zone. As such, evidence of adhesive to abrasive wear transition was observed when the CSM-GFRP composite was subjected to the stainless steel counterface. On the contrary, T-BFRP composite formed a thin layer of shield (i.e. back film transfer) on its worn surface during the test, which assisted in lowering the material removal rate. © The Author(s) 2011

Thermo mechanical and morphological interrelationship of polypropylene-multiwalled carbon nanotubes nanocomposites

In this research, the significance effects of MWCNTs at lower percentage addition in affecting the thermomechanical behavior of the fabricated PP/MWCNTs nanocomposites were studied. PP/MWCNTs nanocomposites were compounded by using the internal mixer, through the simple melt blending technique. The improvement effects of MWCNTs addition were well justified by the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) surface morphological observation. The interrelationships between the TEM surface observations with the thermomechanical results were established by manipulating the three major plots of dynamic mechanical analysis of storage modulus, loss modulus and damping modulus (tanδ). From this work, it was found that the improvement of dynamic thermomechanical properties is directly related to the amount of MWCNTs added and the quality of MWCNTs dispersion within the PP matrix