Thermal and Mechanical Couplings in Plain and Wood Fibre Reinforced Polypropylene during Tensile and Fracture Tests

Abstract

The aim of this work was to show the influence of spruce fibres on polypropylene, by way of an experimental thermo-mechanical approach. These studies were performed by the simultaneous measurement of the strain field and the thermal field. A digital image correlation method was used for the strain measurements. The thermal field was obtained with the help of an infrared camera. The heat equation established in the context of classical thermodynamics of irreversible processes allowed us to evaluate the heat sources. The main difference between the plain resin and the composite material was that the heat sources dissipated by the composite were locally lower. In tensile tests the plain material allowed the creation of a neck zone with very high strain values. In fracture tests, it also generated very high strains localised at the crack tip. For the composite, the results of tensile tests showed that the presence of wood fibres led to a quasi-brittle failure of the specimen. In fracture tests, a better overstress accommodation was observed near the crack tip by distributing the strains in a wider zone.