Development of One Unity Composites

Abstract

The lighter material is wished for a structure part of portable electronic devices and general home electric appliances. The compound material of the light weight and high strength is studied in recent years, but it is a problem to become high cost as a result because the raw material cost and the processing cost is high. It’s also difficult for recycle the reinforced compound material by a glass fiber and a carbon fiber. On the other hand, nonwoven fabric of core and sheath is cheap and high productivity with comparative. In addition, if one unity composite fibers are used for both core and sheath, the molded composites can be recycled easily. And with that, it was aimed that developing a composite material has both characteristics of low cost, light weight and high recyclability by using nonwoven fabric of core and sheath type one unity composite fiber. PP / PP and PET / PET are used for the raw nonwoven fabrics in this study. When they are molded, the core part becomes fiber part and the sheath part becomes the matrix part because the only sheath part is melted. The molding conditions is chosen by using DSC. Firstly, nonwoven fabric of core and sheath type one unity composite fiber was molded by using hot press machine. Subsequently, it is carried out that evaluation of tensile strength and tensile elastic modulus. Finally, cross section observation by SEM was carried out. As the result, the strength of PP/PP composites showed three times of only PP resin and the strength of PET/PET composites showed three times of only PET resin but these elastic modulus were not reinforced effectively.