Highly Filled Short Banana Fiber-Polypropylene Composites: Fiber Concentration and Interfacial Adhesion Effects on Damping and Mechanical Performance

Natural fiber-hybrid composites are gaining significant interest from automotive applications because these composites meet performance requirements but are often lighter and lower cost than other fiber composites, therein reducing the environmental burden of the vehicle during its use phase. In the case of natural fibers, the inherent hydrophilicity of natural fibers is one of the biggest challenges to overcome as these materials take up moisture at a significantly higher rate and most thermoplastic matrices are hydrophobic, resulting in poor interfacial bonding between the dissimilar fiber and matrix. In this work, composites are prepared by first creating a non-woven fiber mat of polymer fiber and natural fiber in a wet-lay process, drying, and then compression molding to the final desired shape. A water-based sizing agent is added directly to the process to size fibers in situ during wet-lay. The composite properties are evaluated including the tensile strength and impact resistance, damping, heat distortion temperature and water uptake. Finally, demonstration parts will be shown that are compression molded from the wet-laid non-woven process.