Wood Fiber-HDPE Composites Reinforced With Basalt Fibers

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in developing composite materials from renewable resources. Wood fiber-reinforced thermo-plastics, usually called wood-plastic composites (WPCs), have recently received a great deal of attention from both academia and industry. The mechanical properties of WPCs are similar to that of wood and plastic, in this case WPCs are widely used in gardening, municipal applications, automobiles, and other applications such as pallet construction. However, the mechanical properties of WPCs are insufficient to fit the requirements of structural and engineering construction. The reason is that the hydrophilic bio-fibers and hydrophobic thermoplastic matrix usually creates a weak interfacial bond between. In this case, high performance fibers were investigated to improve the WPCs’ properties.Basalt fibers (BFs) are made from volcanic rocks. It has been tried to use it as an alternative reinforcement material for polymer matrix composites. In recent years, basalt fibers have been studied extensively as reinforcements in both thermoplastic and thermosetting matrices, The purpose of present research was to evaluate the influence of basalt fibers on wood fiber (WF)-high density polyethylene (HDPE) composite. The mechanical properties and surface adhesion of the hybrid-reinforced plastic composites were examined.(1) Basalt fibers with different length and content were added to the wood-plastic composite to enhance the properties of WF/HDPE composite, the results showed that the addition of basalt fibers was helpful to improve the mechanical properties of WF/HDPE composite. Long fibers had better enhancement because they could cost more power and disperse stress. Fibers with6mm and9mm length had similar enhancement. The mechanical properties of the composite were improved when increase the content of BF until12wt%, due to the poor dispersion of balsa fibers in HDPE matrix. Weak interface combination was exhibited between fibers and resin matrix when BFs were untreated.(2) Basalt fibers were surface-modified by y-aminopropyltriethoxysilane coupling agent (KH-550) and Vinyl-triethoxysilane coupling agent (YGO-1203) to improve the mechanical properties of WF/HDPE composites. Basalt fibers were characterized by SEM and FTIR. The effects of the basalt fiber content and micrographic fracture surface on the mechanical properties of resulted composites were investigated in this paper. Results showed that BF modified with coupling agent provided an improvement in impact property due to the increased interfacial compatibility between BF and HDPE. The tensile and flexure strength of the composites increased with the addition of basalt fiber treated by KH-550and YGO-1203, respectively. The properties increased obviously with4%content of modified basalt fibers. (3) Basalt fibers were treated with the Piranha solution in order to further improve the compatibility between fibers and matrix, and then modified with different coupling agent. The results showed that the Piranha solution makes the surface of basalt fibers surface became activated, the compatibility and interface adhesion were further improved. BF treated with Vinyl-triethoxysilane coupling agent is the most significant; MAPE have an effect on modified fiber, because of the interaction between two kinds of compatilizer, the flexural strength of composites contains YGO-1203and the impact strength of composites combines KH-550improved. the compatibility of wood fiber and HDPE matrix have been improved.