Fabrication and Characterization of Wood Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites

Wood-polymer composites (WPCs) combine the properties of wood and polymers. Creating composites involves adding plant or wood fibers as fillers to a polymer matrix. This study used mahogany and mango wood sawdust as reinforcement materials, while high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) were used as matrices. The investigated data in this study comprises four different (10, 20, 30, and 40) weight percentages (wt%) of mahogany and mango sawdust paired with corresponding wt% (90, 80, 70, and60) of HDPE and PVC matrices. The extrusion method produced composites with different amounts of sawdust and polymer matrices. Wood polymer composites were characterized by examining their mechanical properties, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was employed to analyze their morphology. The results showed that the maximum tensile strength was obtained from the 20% for both sawdust composites. The ultimate tensile strength was recorded at 15.28 MPa for Mahogany sawdust-HDPE (Mh-HDPE) composite, whereas the Mahogany sawdust-PVC (Mh-PVC) exhibited the lowest tensile strength at 2.38 MPa. In addition, HDPE-based composite shows higher tensile strength (11.56 MPa) with Mango sawdust than PVC-based composites (2.28 MPa). Tensile strength, and impact strength of the fabricated composites were also assessed by ASTM standards. The maximum impact strength was obtained at 10wt% of sawdust for all four composites investigated in this study. It was also observed that impact strength significantly decreased with the increase of fiber percentage in the composite. These results demonstrated the highest mechanical properties of the Mh-HDPE than the other composites, which SEM further investigated. The morphological analyses confirmed uniform mixing of sawdust and polymer matrices, evident by the absence of no pores, cavities, or voids in the prepared composites.