Effect of Jute Fiber Surface Treatment on Mechanical Properties of Jute/Epoxy Reinforced Composites

This paper investigates the effect of jute fiber treatments on the mechanical properties of jute-reinforced epoxy composites. In general, fiber treatments can significantly enhance the interface combination between reinforced fiber and resin matrix and improve adhesion, also lead to ingress of the matrix resin into the fibers, obstructing pull-out of the resin matrix. Treatments including silane coupling agent KH560, titanate NDZ201, alkali treatment, mild acetylation, and cyanoethylation were carried out to optimize the fiber surface and its internal structure. The effects of these five methods were evaluated by testing the tensile and bending strength of the fibers as well as characterizing the fiber's micro-morphology by SEM. Furthermore, the change in the fiber crystallinity was determined by X-ray diffraction. The above observations show that these modification techniques are all in favor of decreasing the crystallinity degree of the jute and improving the interface compatibility between jute and epoxy resin. Among those, the alkali treated jute-epoxy composites exhibited best tensile strength (69.75MPa), and KH560 treated jute-epoxy composites exhibited best bending strength (122.45MPa), which are 69.5% and 54.3% higher than the corresponding mechanical properties of the untreated jute-epoxy composites respectively.