Mechanical and thermal properties of compatibilized polypropylene reinforced by woven doum

ABSTRACT In this work, the development and the mechanical characterization of a doum textile composite based on a polypropylene matrix were carried out. Mechanical and rheological tests were effectuated, to illustrate the effect of woven fibers on the mechanical and viscoelastic properties at 0°, 15°, 30°, and 45° directions. The woven fibers were treated and the matrix was melted to a coupling agent to assure compatibility between the fibers and the polymer. The composites with long fiber are generally used as film and the main properties is the tensile. In this study, our goal was to improve the tensile properties. Results have shown that tensile properties exhibited a significant increase when compared to the polypropylene. However, it was observed that the stress direction has no influence on the thermal properties of the composite. Also, this article evaluates models that predict the stiffness of the composites at different stress directions to be compared to the experiments. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 130: 4347–4356, 2013