Effect of Wood Species and Coupling Agent on Mechanical Properties of Wood Flour/HDPE Composites

As the major component of WPCs, wood flour species plays an important role on the properties of the resulting composites. The effect of wood species as filler and reinforcement and MAPE as compatibilizer on mechanical properties of wood flour/high-density polyethylene composite was investigated. The wood species used in this study were loblolly pine and hybrid Euro-American poplar. The mechanical properties such as tensile properties and notched impact toughness were tested. Poplar flour provides an improvement in tensile strength, tensile modulus, tensile energy absorption, and failure strain over pine. Tensile strength of both the composites was much higher for compatibilized composites as compared with uncompatibilized ones. For the pine composites, tensile modulus improvements were attained even with 1% compatibilizer. There was little difference in the properties obtained between the 1% and 2% compatibilizer. For the poplar composites, adding 1% compatibilizer did not have significant effect on tensile modulus and there was a significant drop in tensile modulus with further 2% increase in the compatibilizer. Wood species and compatibilizer percent did not have significant effect on the notched Izod toughness.