Water Absorption and Thickness Swelling Behavior of Polypropylene Reinforced with Hybrid Recycled Newspaper and Glass Fi
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Water Absorption and Thickness Swelling Behavior of Polypropylene Reinforced with Hybrid Recycled Newspaper and Glass Fiber Alireza Shakeri & Ali Ghasemian
Received: 17 March 2009 / Accepted: 28 October 2009 / Published online: 21 November 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract This study aims to investigate the moisture absorption of recycled newspaper fiber and recycled newspaper-glass fiber hybrid reinforced polypropylene composites to study their suitability in outdoor applications. In this work composite materials were made from E-glass fiber (G), recycled newspaper (NP) and polypropylene (PP), by using internal mixing and hot-pressing molding. Long-term water absorption (WA) and thickness swelling (TS) kinetics of the composites was investigated with water immersion. It was found that the WA and TS increase with NP content in composite and water immersion time before an equilibrium condition was reached. Composites made from the NP show comparable results as those made of the hybrid fiber. The results suggest that the water absorption and thickness swelling composite decrease with increasing glass fiber contents in hybrid fiber composite. It is interesting to find that the WA and TS can be reduced significantly with incorporation of a coupling agent (maleated polypropylene) in the composite formulation. Further studies were conducted to model the water diffusion and thickness swelling of the composites. Diffusion coefficients and swelling rate parameters in the models were obtained by fitting the model predictions with the experimental data. Keywords Composite . Recycled newspaper . Water absorption kinetics . Thickness swelling
1 Introduction The natural fiber plastic composites (NFPC) have gained increasing interest and broader application during the past decade due to the desirable properties of natural fiber [1].
A. Shakeri (*) Chemistry Department, Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran e-mail: [email protected] A. Ghasemian Pulp and Paper Department, Agricultural and Natural Resources University of Gorgan, Gorgan, Iran
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Appl Compos Mater (2010) 17:183–193
Development of thermoplastic composites using natural fibers in combination with a small amount of moisture-resistant and corrosion-resistant synthetic fibers is one technique to enhance the strength and stiffness as well as moisture resistance of the resulted hybrid fiber composites. In building applications, dimensional stability of the NFPC is critical, especially for outdoor use. To improve the stability, understanding of the water absorption process and impact of the absorbed water on the dimensional change is important [2]. Previous studies have applied diffusion theory to quantify the water absorption process in the NFPC [3]. Most of these studies used mixture of natural fibers and thermoplastics for the composite formulations. This work aims to investigate the characteristics of water sorption kinetics and thickness swelling behavior in the made NP and NP/ glass fiber reinforced -PP hybrid composite. 1.1 Theoretical App
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