Tensile properties of hollow glass bead‐filled polypropylene composites

The tensile properties of polypropylene (PP) filled with hollow glass beads have been measured at room temperature to identify the effects of the particle contents, size and its distribution on them in the present article. The mean diameters of the fillers were 11, 35, and 70 μm, and they were named as TK10, TK35, and TK70 respectively. The surface of these particles was pretreated with silane coupling agent. The results showed that the yield stress (σy) decreased gently for PP/TK70 systems, whereas decreased relatively obviously for PP/TK35 systems with increasing the volume fraction (ϕf) of the fillers. When ϕf was less than 5%, the tensile strength at break (σb) of the composites increased with the increase of ϕf. When ϕf was more than 5%, σb was almost a constant for PP/TK70 systems, while σb decreased linearly for PP/TK35 systems. The tensile fracture strain (εb) of the composites decreased suddenly when ϕf was less than 5%, and then decreased slightly with increasing ϕf. When ϕf was 10%, σy and σb increased while εb decreased with the increase of the bead diameter. Furthermore, the σy was predicted by means an equation proposed in the previous work, and good interfacial adhesion was shown between the hollow glass beads and the matrix.