• Krause, Andreas
• Bahari, Shahril
• Grigsby, Warren

Abstract

Polyvinyl chloride(PVC)composites containing bamboo particles have been produced by hot-cool mixing,extrusion,and compression molding processing. PVC was mixed with different bamboo particle sizes and loadings and used two different processing lubricant contents in the compositions. The flexural properties and dynamic mechanical-thermal analysis(DMTA)have been determined for composites before and after long term water-soaking to assess their potential exterior performance. Analysis revealed bamboo incorporation improved the PVC composites flexural modulus which was also observed by DMTA on heating composites to ca. 70C. Addition of 25%and 50%bamboo particles increases flexural modulus by 80%with dependency on whether fine(75m)or coarse(1 mm)particles were used. On water-soaking to saturation,composites had weight uptakes of 10%with greater particle content. As found for WPCs,water soaking also reduced flexural properties of all composites. However,the results of this study show the PVC/bamboo composites achieve ASTM D 6662,indicating potential for their use in both ambient and exterior applications.

Topics

• extrusion
• composite
• thermal analysis
• compression molding