Extrusion and Injection Moulded Microcellular Wood Fibre Reinforced Polypropylene Composites

Microcellular processing techniques have been applied at an experimental level to both extrusion and injection moulding plastics processing, using wood fibre as reinforcing filler. The focus of the current research is the investigations of these processes using chemical foaming agents and comparative studies of physico-mechanical properties of materials. Results of using different chemical foaming agents (endothermic and exothermic), the variation of their content for producing wood fibre-polypropylene microfoamed composites and the effect of a coupling agent on the composites are presented. Microcells morphology, cell size, shape and distribution were investigated using scanning electron micrographs.