Mechanical and acoustic behaviour of porosity controlled randomly dispersed flax/PP biocomposite

Justin Merotte (1) , Antoine Le Duigou (2) , Alain Bourmaud (2) , Karim Behlouli , Christophe Baley (2)

1 LIMATB - Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Matériaux de Bretagne
2 IRDL - Institut de Recherche Dupuy de Lôme

Commingled plant and polypropylene fibres (PP) nonwovens are attractive for automotive industry because of their interesting mechanical performances combined with good acoustical properties. This double function is achieved thanks of controlled porosity within the composite material. Indeed, from a same material, different functions (acoustic or mechanical) can be obtained by only varying the compaction rate during moulding. This study aims to highlight the necessity of a very large porosity volume fraction (60%) to reach good acoustic properties and understand the mechanical effect behind it. By combining tensile testing, acoustic absorption measurement and scanning electron imaging analysis, the microstructure, acoustic and mechanical properties have been investigated and were found to be intimately related to the material porosity content. As expected, when increasing porosity level from 5 to 60%, the material behaviour change and its tensile properties (modulus, strength and elasticity domain) drop drastically to a point where the material is no longer elastic (70% porosity) due to a modification of the material microstructure involving different failure mechanisms. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mots clés: Biocomposite; Mechanical properties; Microstructures; Porosity

Domaines: Matériaux

Justin Merotte, Antoine Le Duigou, Alain Bourmaud, Karim Behlouli, Christophe Baley. Mechanical and acoustic behaviour of porosity controlled randomly dispersed flax/PP biocomposite. Polymer Testing, 2016, 51, pp.174-180. ⟨10.1016/j.polymertesting.2016.03.002⟩. ⟨hal-02110738⟩