Jute sack cloth reinforced polypropylene composites: Mechanical and sorption studies

Composite materials were fabricated using jute and polypropylene sacks by compression molding. Different types of composites were fabricated by varying the number of jute layers, number of polypropylene layers and the mode of combination of jute and polypropylene layers keeping the total number of layers a constant. It was found that as the number of polypropylene layers increases, the tensile strength, tear strength and modulus increased, but the elongation at break and equilibrium water uptake were found to be decreased. Also, when the number of jute layers increases, by keeping the number of polypropylene layers constant, generally failure properties decreased but an increased water uptake was observed. The influence of various constructions on the properties was analysed by changing the mode of combination of jute and polypropylene layers. In these experiments, the total number of layers were fixed a constant. It was found that the preferred combination is one with jute as core layer and polypropylene as skin layers. Scanning electron microscopy was used to analyse the failure surface morphology of the composites. Finally value added product was fabricated using selected composites.