Water absorption behavior of the woven bamboo fabric polypropylene-based composites and their hybrids with glass

The high prone behavior towards water absorption is considered as a major weakness of natural based-fiber composites or bio-composites. These composites can be susceptible to considerable water absorbed due to hydrophilic nature of bamboo fiber, which may affect to degradation of their strength and stiffness performances. The effect of the hybridization is investigated with the study of water immersion at 23 °C and 60 °C, for a period of 70 days. It was shown that the composite’s absorption behavior demonstrated the kinetics behavior and classification proposed by Fick’s theory. There was a 142 % increase in the diffusion coefficients of samples immersed at 60 °C compared to those at 23 °C for BPP composites. The water absorption of BPP composites at 23 °C after 1680 h was approximate of 14.6 %, with the absorption was quite rapid initially, reaching almost 13.01 % after about 720 h. For the hybrid composites of 30B:20G, 20B:35G and 10B:45G for water absorption at 23 °C was reaching almost 10.56 %, 7.30 %, and 2.81 % respectively after 720 h. Furthermore, the composites approached equilibrium faster at 60 °C than at 23 °C. The absorption rate was significantly higher at 60 °C, with 80 % of the total absorption in the first 14 days, while the BPP composites at the immersion of 23 °C, reached equilibrium in the first 30 days. Similar behavior was also observed for the hybrid composites, reached almost 80 % of the total absorption in the first 7 days, when compared with 20 days for the hybrid composites. The presence of external plies of glass effectively decelerates water diffusion into the bamboo polypropylene (BPP) composites. The findings denote a significant observation in which, by substituting few layers of glass with woven-based bamboo in glass-polypropylene composites, offering to a hybrid concept to be possible for developing an alternative, excellent and better performance of light-weight composite.