Abstract:
This work studied the effect of wood sawdust content, moisture content in premixed wood sawdust and aminosilane surface treatment on rheological, mechanical and thermal properties of PVC/sawdust composites. The results of varying sawdust content revealed that the torque and die entrance pressure drop values during mixing were independent of sawdust particles up to 23.1 wt%. The extrudate swell monotonically decreased up to 33.3 wt% sawdust content. Tensile, Impact,flexural and hardness properties of the PVC/sawdust composites considerably decreased with sawdust content up to 16.7 wt% before leveling off at higher sawdust loadings. The decreases in mechanical properties of PVC with sawdust were explained in association with the presence of moisture, interfacial defects between fibre and polymer, and fibre dispersions in the PVC matrix. The thermal stability of PVC in PVC/sawdust composites was decreased with sawdust content due to hydroxyl group of cellulose which caused Cl cleavage. The maximum tan? and the glass transition temperature were improved with sawdust content. The surface quality of composite product was worsened when initial moisture in PVC/sawdust mixture was higher than 1 wt%. In the case of composites having sawdust 16.7 and 28.6 wt% the mechanical properties were decreased with increasing moisture. However the mechanical properties were improved by swelling of sawdust particles. For 37.5 wt% sawdust content the effect of moisture on mechanical properties was not observed. Thermal stability was decreased by moisture while the glass transition temperature and the onset of decomposition temperature were not changed. The effect of aminosilane type and concentrations were also studied. The average torque value appeared to increase with aminosilane content, and later decreased when the aminosilane content was added greater than 1.0%, this being the case for the sawdust content of 41.2%. Concentrations of 0.5-1.0 wt% and 1.5 wt% coupling agents were recommended for the optimization of the tensile and impact properties of composites, respectively. Changes in the tensile and impact properties of composites with low sawdust content were more sensitive to the addition of aminosilane coupling agents than those with high sawdust content. KBM603 was suitable for improving the tensile properties while KBE603 was recommended for high impact resistance of the composites. The differences in the mechanical properties of the PVC/sawdust composites were dependent on the characteristics of functional groups in the aminosilane coupling agents used such as hydrophilic level, number of functional groups, self-condensation reaction, and the effectiveness of the hydrolysis reaction. The aminosilane coupling agents had little effect on thermal properties.