Influence of Rubber Powders on Foaming Behavior and Mechanical Properties of Foamed Polypropylene Composites
Yue HE1,2,3, Tuan-hui JIANG2, Yang-fu LIU2,3, Wei GONG1,2,3,*(), Li HE2,3
1 School of Materials and Architectural Engineering, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550014, China 2 National Engineering Research Center for Compounding and Modification of Polymer Materials, Guiyang 550014, China 3 College of Materials and Metallurgy, Guizhou University, Guiyang 550025, China
Polypropylene/rubber powders composites with different kinds of rubber powders were foamed by injection molding machine equipped with volume-adjustable cavity. The effect of dispersity of rubber powders and crystallization behavior of composites on the foaming behavior and mechanical properties was investigated. The results show that the addition of rubber powders can improve the cell structure of foamed PP with fine and uniform cell distribution. And cell density and size of PP/PP-MAH/NBR foams are 7.64×106cell/cm3 and 29.78μm respectively, which are the best among these foams. Combining cell structures with mechanical properties, notch impact strength of PP/PP-MAH/CNBR composites increases approximately by 2.2 times while tensile strength is reduced just by 26% compared with those of the pure PP. This indicates that PP/PP-MAH/CNBR composites are ideal foamed materials.
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