Sunny T, Pickering KL. Improving Polypropylene Matrix Composites Reinforced with Aligned Hemp Fibre Mats Using High Fibre Contents. Materials. 2022; 15(16):5587. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15165587
Abstract
The main goal of this study was to improve the mechanical performance of polypropylene (PP) matrix composites through high hemp fibre content. In order to achieve high fibre content, the possibilities of different polymer sheet thicknesses and stacking arrangements were investigated. It was found that decreasing the overall thickness of fibre mats between two polymer sheets within the stacking arrangements of composites and so decreasing the distance the polymer needs to travel improved the fibre wetting and therefore improved the tensile properties. The strongest composite produced had a fibre content of about 60 wt%. At this fibre content, tensile strength and Young’s modulus of the composites were found to be 3.0 and 6.9 times, respectively, higher than the control samples (polymer only samples), while figures for flexural strength and flexural modulus were 3.4 and 3.6, respectively.
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© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
