Mechanical and acoustical properties of Eichhornia crassipes (water hyacinth) fiber-reinforced styrene butadiene rubber

The essential target of this investigation is to valorize an Eichhornia crassipes fiber (ECF) and maleates of Eichhornia crassipes fiber (MoECF) as reinforcing fillers in styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) composites in terms of the mechanical, acoustical, thermal, and morphological properties. Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy characterizes the esterification of ECF with maleic anhydride (MA) and the graft of MoECF onto SBR. SBR composites manufactured with different loadings of ECF and MoECF (1, 2.5, 5, 10, and 20 phr). Scanning electron microscope illustrates the MoECF upgrade interfacial adhesion with the SBR matrix. It is observed that 5 and 20 phr of MoECF enhance the tensile strength and elongation at break of SBR composites by 8% and 310%, respectively. 10 phr of MoECF maintains the tensile strength of SBR composite during the accelerated thermal aging course. While 20 phr of MoECF improves the tensile strength of SBR composite by 19% with increment-accelerated thermal aging time to 7 days. The higher loading (10 and 20 phr) of MoECF ameliorates the thermal stability of SBR composites. SBR composite containing 10 phr of MoECF has sound absorption amplitude equal to 0.9 at the frequency of 400 Hz. The sound absorption performance improved within low-frequency regions below 500 Hz with increasing thickness to 2.3 mm.

Automated summary

The study evaluated the use of ECF and MoECF as reinforcing fillers in SBR composites, finding that MoECF can improve the mechanical properties and thermal stability of the composites, as well as enhance the sound absorption performance of the materials.