Microwave Hybrid Heating for Moulding of Sisal/Jute/HDPE Composites

Microwave processing of polymer composites is gaining attention as a viable alternative to traditional thermal processing techniques owing to several reasons, including faster and environment-friendly processing. In the present study, High-density polyethylene (HDPE) reinforced with jute and sisal fibers (10 wt.%) composites were fabricated using microwave energy at 2.45 GHz frequency. The mechanism of microwave molding of the composites has been explained. To understand and compare the performance of the fabricated composites, mechanical (tensile and flexural), thermogravimetric (TGA), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses were employed to evaluate the performance of the composites. The composites exhibited significant improvement in tensile strength (29.25% and 48.69%), flexural strength (19.22% and 27.47%), and crystallinity (6.41% and 13.02%) for HDPE/Jute and HDPE/Sisal, respectively while compared to pure HDPE. The fractography confirmed that the fiber pull-out was the major mechanism of failure of the composites under mechanical loading. The processing data show that the application of microwave energy is a potential method to process natural fiber-based polymeric composites in a relatively low processing time.