Thermal stability of natural fiber reinforced biodegradable composites

Abstract

Abstract Polymer composites reinforced with natural fibers are being increasingly developed by researcher and scientist in the recent field of material science due to their various applications in aerospace, marine and industries. The hydrophilic natural fibers are incompatible with the hydrophobic polymer matrices this leads to less interfacial bonding between fibers and matrix. In this paper, fibers were collected from desert plant prosopis juliflora and NaOH treatment was done to increase interfacial bonding of fiber-Matrix. Prosopis Juliflora fiber reinforced phenol formaldehyde composites were prepared with different fiber loading up to 20wt% and then characterized by thermo gravimetric analysis. This paper describes thermal properties composites materials by Thermo gravimetric analysis TGA and Differential scanning calorimetric DSC analysis of composite materials with different heating rates and hence establishes a connection between temperature and physical properties of substances. This study highlights the potential of alkali treatment in improving the thermal stability of the composites. This paper concludes that by, increasing the fiber weight percentage (fiber loading) in PF resin does increase the thermal stability of the resulting composite. The mass residue of untreated fiber reinforced PF composites with fiber loading 15% wt. UTFRPFC 15was 35%, while treated fiber reinforced PF composites with fiber loading 15% wt. ATFRPFC 15 had a mass residue of 75% at a temperature of 400°C. This clearly shows that alkali treatment significantly enhances the thermal stability of the composites. Alkali pre-treatment activates the fibers’ surface and helps increase the fiber’s mechanical strength.