Factors optimization to improve the tensile and flexural properties of short fibre non-woven hedgehog chestnuts spines reinforced polyester composites
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abstract
Over the last decade has been observed an increased interest in the use of natural fibers
instead of synthetic fibres (i.e. glass, carbon or kevlar fibres). The natural fibre
composites (NFC) have important advantages like their fibers are a renewable resource,
for which production requires little energy, involves CO2 absorption, whilst returning
oxygen to the environment and can be produced at lower cost than synthetic fibre [1].
However, the NFC have also some limitations, namely, lower durability than for
synthetic fibre composites and they have a greater variability of properties [1].
Nevertheless, all these characteristics can vary profoundly depending on many factors
such as fibre selection, matrix selection, interfacial strength, fibre dispersion, fibre
orientation, composite manufacturing process and porosity [2]. In this work, the authors
propose study the influence of some factors in the short fibre non-woven hedgehog
chestnuts spines reinforced polyester composites performance. For this propose, will be
used the design of experiments (DOE) approach developed by Taguchi. Thus, the
factors that will be controlled are the fibre dispersion which is defined by fibre/matrix
mass ratio or weight fraction, the interfacial strength that could be improved using an
alkali–silane treatment and, finally, the level of moisture in the fibres. For a preliminary
analysis a suitable number of levels for each factor is three. Considering the number of
factors to be controlled and the number of levels, an adequate orthogonal array of
experiments is the L9 and the data that is analyzed is the tensile and flexural properties.
To finish, the data will be statistically treated using the analysis of variance and
determined the influence of each factor in the composite performance as well as the
optimal factors and levels combination to obtain highest values of tensile and flexural
strength.
