Abstract:
In-situ poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) micro brils were created by drawing a blend of
polypropylene (PP) and PET. These were used to create micro brillar polymer-polymer
composites (MFCs), and micro brillar single polymer composites (MF-SPCs) to compare
the e ect of di erent bril orientations on the mechanical properties.
The resulting composites showed excellent improvements in sti ness of 77% for uniaxial
MFCs, and 125% for uniaxial MF-SPCs, with the highest recorded modulus of 8.57
GPa for a uniaxial MF-SPC sample, approaching that of glass bre reinforced PET.
SEM observations con rmed that the brillar structure and excellent alignment was
maintained. The changes in the reinforcement e ect with orientation were very similar
to those predicted by the rule of mixtures for crossply, and chaotic in-plane samples.
Nano brillar polymer-polymer composites (NFCs) with di erent bril orientations were
also created from in-situ PET nano brils, with the intention of creating nano brillar
single polymer composites (NF-SPCs) with the same orientations for comparison. The
comparisons drawn between nano bril and micro bril reinforced composites leads to the
conclusion that, as expected nano brils o er superior reinforcement e ects, however their
orientation is more di cult to maintain through processing into NF-SPCs.
Comparisons were also drawn between the composites created in this study, and previous
work with MFCs, MF-SPCs, NFCs, and NF-SPCs.