THE EFFECT OF COLEMANITE ADDITION ON THE MICROSTRUCTURAL AND MECHANICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF IPP

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the addition of the colemanite having 45µm size on the significant characteristic features of the isotactic polypropylene (IPP). The microstructural properties (diffraction pattern, a,b and c unit cell parameters and grain size) and mechanical behaviors (tensile strength, Young's Modulus, impact strength and percent elongation of the samples relative to the colemanite content (5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 wt.%) were studied in details. The optimum amount of colemanite was determined in order to obtain IPP based composites having the improved properties. The obtained samples were characterized by using XRD and conventional mechanical tests. The results showed that the content level of the colemanite considerably affected to the fundamental properties of IPP. As for microstuructural properties, it was observed from the XRD patterns that all composite samples mainly showed only α form (monoclinic arrangement) in the crystalline domains without any β form (hexagonal arrangements). Moreover, the finding revealed that a and b the unit cell parameters of IPP based composites increased initially, reached the maximum values with the products containing 10% of colemanite, and then the consistent decrement trend was observed with the further increasing of the colemanite content in the products. Conversely, c unit cell parameter almost remained relatively unchanged. Furthermore, the mechanical test measurements depicted that the reinforcements were achieved in the tensile, Modulus and impact strengths of the composite materilas, while the percent elongation of the products decreased with the increasing of the colemanite content. 7.4%, 24.9% and 6.7% increases were recorded in the tensile strength, Modulus and impact strength at the product with 10% colemanite, respectively. The improvements was probably stemmed from that the presence of micro size colemanite particles gave rise to increment in the orientations and alignments of IPP chain in the matrix.

Keywords

• colemanite
• unit cell parameters
• mechanical properties
• IPP based composites
• percent elongation

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