Study of Mechanical, Thermal, and Rheological Properties of Areca Fiber-Reinforced Polyvinyl Alcohol Composite

In the present work, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) thermoplastic matrix has been reinforced by randomly oriented short areca sheath (AS) fiber to prepare PVA/AS composite by injection molding. The fiber has been chemically modified with benzyl chloride to have better compatibility with PVA matrix. Different mechanical properties such as tensile strength, Young's modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, and impact strengths of the composite with varying weight percentage of treated fibers have been studied and the optimum weight percentage has been determined by regression analysis. It has been observed that the maximum values of mechanical properties of the composite are obtained at optimum weight percentage (i.e., 27 wt%) of AS fiber. The chemical interaction of polymers with fibers has been characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy at this fiber loading. The thermal properties of the composite have been studied through dynamic mechanical thermal analysis, thermal gravimetric analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry at optimum fiber loading. Rheological properties of the composite in terms of complex viscosity (eta*), storage modulus (G '), loss modulus (G ''), and damping factor (tan delta) have been investigated through a parallel plate rheometer and compared with virgin PVA. From the characterization and study of properties, it is observed that PVA/AS composite gives best performance at optimum fiber loading.