MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF PP/PET (POLYPROPYLENE AND POLY(ETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATE)) MICROFIBRILLAR COMPOSITE WITH AND WITHOUT COUPLING AGENT

Among thermoplastic polymer blends, combination of polypropylene, (PP) with poly (ethylene terephthalate), (PET) offer great advantages over the pure components. PET enhanced the stiffness of PP at higher temperature while PET low permeability towards water vapor and oxygen helps in packaging materials where it can prevent moisture from damaging the product inside the packaging. Tensile strength of PP can be increased with addition of PET element in it which helps the product produced have higher strength to withstand the force applied. This project will present the feasibility study of processing and characterization of PP/PET microfibrillar composites. MFCs are created by mixing two polymers with melting temperature different about 40 to 45°C. In this project, the matrix is PP and PET acting as the reinforcement. The two polymers then melt and blend together using twin-screw extruder at temperature above the melting point Tm to ensure that the polymers melt completely during the extrusion process. Then the polymer blends was drawn carefully under the glass transition temperature, Tg of PET and then the blends was cut using granulator. Compression moulding machine was used to compress the polymer blends in the shape of granule into a plate of polymer blends. Dog bone shape of the polymer blends then were cut to test the sample’s mechanical properties using Universal testing machine. ASTM D638, D790 and D256 standards were used in the mechanical properties test to study the tensile, flexural and impact strength of the polymer blends. The processing of PP/PET MFCs was successfully done with 70/30/5 wt% ratio. MFCs show improvement in tensile strength of 5% for the drawn and undrawn comparison and 3% for coupling agent comparison. Flexural strength shows 1.3% for the drawn and undrawn comparison and 24% for coupling agent comparison. Impact strength shows 5.3% for the drawn and undrawn comparison and 110% for coupling agent compariso