Reinforcement Mechanism Of Continuous Flash Exploded Plant Fibers And PBS Composites

The plant fiber/polymer composites are low-carbon, environmental friendly material. Itsapplication and development can not only ease the issue that the development of polymermaterials is limited due to exhausting e oil resources, but also provide an effective path for thecomprehensive utilization of the waste plant resources. While composites are mixed withplant fiber powder and polymer, as the powder only increase the quality, not increase thestrength, which limited the space of application and development. To prepare composites byusing polymer and plant fiber with slender structure, then the polymer can be strengthenedwhen its quality increases. We all know that continuous flash explosion equipment can makeraw plant fiber into slender fiber, but conventional explosion equipment is intermittent onewhich has many shortcomings, such as difficult to realize automation and continuity, longcycle, high investment costs and large area, and so on. Until continuous flash explosionequipment developed by our laboratory, successfully solve the above problem. In this paper,reinforcement mechanism of composites which were melt mixing with continuous flashexploded fibers and poly (butylene succinate), respectively as reinforcement and matrix, wasreasonably analyzed.Eucalyptus, sisal and caulis spatholobi residue are modified by the continuous flashexplosion equipment into slender fibers. The morphologies and chemical composition of themodified fibers are characterized with scanning electron microscope and NREL method,respectively. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermo gravimetric analysis, X-rayphotoelectron spectroscopy and wide angle X-ray diffraction are used to characterizecomposition and structure of fibers at all sides. The effect of pretreatment with washing orultrasonic on the performance of the composites is analyzed with the variation of fibercomposition and structure after the pretreatment. And the effect of adding different type andcontent of flash exploded fibers into PBS matrix on the performance of the composites is alsoanalyzed. The continuous flash exploded fibers are simulated by cotton fibers,microcrystalline cellulose, lignin and xylooligosaccharides. And it is analyzed that the effectof principal components on the performance of the composites using change the content of acomposition. Finally, reinforcement mechanism of continuous flash exploded plant fibers andPBS composites are successfully analyzed.The results show that plant fibers are made into slender and particulate fibers,degradation product of hemicellulose and free lignin on surface of fiber, and so on. Theincrease amplitudes of tensile modulus, flexural strength and modulus of composites are respectively61.0%、116.1%and419.8%when the content of plant fiber reaches40%, whichdemonstrates that adding flash exploded plant fibers into PBS composites not onlysignificantly reduces the EFount of matrix, but also significantly enhances the performance ofcomposites. It was found that: the content of long fiber was the main factor of reinforcingcomposites; the incorporation of granular fiber promoted the dispersion of the long fibers inmatrix; the incorporation of oligosaccharide hindered the interface adhesion between fiber andmatrix, while the lignin improved.In addition, the mechanical property of flash exploited sisal fiber/PBS composites withwashing pretreatment is larger than the ones with ultrasonic, and the ones with no treatment issmaller than the ones with ultrasonic. Both of the treatments for flash exploited sisal fiberenhance interfacial adhesion between fiber and matrix, resulting in improving performance ofcomposites. Creating a simple model can analyze trends of composite properties at differentfiber contents. It was found that a small stay-segment in the stress–strain curve of steamexploited fibers/PBS composites.