Natural fiber reinforced polystyrene composites: Effect of fiber loading, fiber dimensions and surface modification on mechanical properties

Natural fibers have been found to be excellent reinforcing materials for preparing polymer matrix based composites. In the present study both raw and surface modified Agave fiber reinforced polystyrene matrix based composites were prepared in order to explore the effect of reinforcement on the mechanical properties of the matrix. The surface modification of Agave fiber was carried out by graft copolymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) onto it in the presence of ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN) as initiator. For preparing these composites different fiber contents of both raw and grafted fibers (10–30% by weight) have been used. It has been found that 20% fiber content gives optimum mechanical properties. The effect of different fiber dimensions (particle, short and long fibers) on the mechanical properties of the composites has also been investigated. It has been found that particle reinforcement gives better mechanical properties than short and long fiber reinforcement. The composites thus prepared have been characterized by Fourier transform infra red (FT-IR) spectroscopy, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and TGA/DTA techniques. Further the surface modified fiber reinforced composites have been found to be thermally more stable than that of raw fiber reinforced composites.