Study on the Effects of Reinforcing Chicken Feather Fiber (CFF) on Mechanical Properties of Polypropylene (PP)

Natural fibers have many advantages and potentially attractive to be used as
reinforcement material. Various types of natural fibers have been researched and
developed to replace the use of synthetic fibers with improved mechanical properties
able for various applications. It is more economical if the natural fibers are used as
reinforcement material for polymer matrix composites (PMC).
Chicken feather fiber (CFF) has good potential as reinforcement material. It is
the objectives of this study to develop CFF reinforced polypropylene (PP) composites.
The tensile properties were tested and compared to the original PP used as the control
samples. CFF reinforced composite was prepared from raw chicken feather. The
feathers were cleaned, soaked into organic solvent and dried until individual fiber is
separated from each other. Later, the feathers are grinded to reduce the length so that
the short fibers can be obtained, extruded and injection molded to produce test samples
with different percentage of fiber volume fraction. There are 4 batches of samples
which contain a range of volume fractions of CFF; 2.5 vol.%, 5.0 vol.%, 7.5 vol.% and
10 vol.%. After all the samples were prepared, tensile test was conducted. Stress-strain
curve was produced from the test data and the results shown that the modulus of
elasticity was improved to 12.9% at 5.0 vol.% of CFF and improvement in the stiffness
of PP composite is observed at 2.5% vol. of CFF
The fracture surfaces of the tensile specimens for all CFF/PP reinforced
composites were examined by using scanning electrone microscope (SEM). Images
obtained from SEM provided an insight on the interactions between the fiber-matrix
composite. It is proven as the fiber content increases, the presence of voids and broken
fibers were also observed which resulted in reduced properties.