The usage of wood of Dahoma (Piptadeniastrum Africanum), a tropic tree, in the production of wood plastic composite

Abstract

Many tropical tree species are used in the production of furniture, exterior coatings and garden furniture in our country. Dahoma (Piptadeniastrum africanum) timber, considered a tropical tree species, is used extensively as flooring in the interior of vehicles and containers, as wooden flooring on truck floors, as flooring on industrial or heavily used floors, as flooring on docks and piers, in interior staircase construction, and in the construction of furniture components. In this study, the effects of the usage of waste Dahoma wood flour from the profiling machine as a filler in the production of Polypropylene (PP) based wood plastic composites on the mechanical and morphological properties of composite materials were investigated. Waste wood flour was used as received from the plant and in four different ratios (0%, 15%, 30% and 45%). Dimensional analysis of waste wood flours was carried out. Maleic anhydride polypropylene (MAPP) (3%) was used as a coupling agent and Paraffin Wax (3%) was used as the lubricant. In the light of the results, although slight fluctuations were observed in the tensile and impact strength values with the addition of wood flour, improvements were determined in the mechanical values in general. Tensile modulus, flexural strength and flexural modulus of the composites were improved with the increase of wood flour loading ratio. A sharp decrease was observed in the elongation at break values. When the morphological properties were examined, it was observed that the wood flours were homogeneously dispersed in the polymer matrix, the polymer matrix wrapped firmly around the RPF fibres and it shows that the interface interaction is nevertheless robust even after the fracture of samples. As a result, it was concluded that waste Dahoma wood flours might be evaluated in the production of wood-plastic composites.