THE EFFECT OF REPROCESSING ON THE TENSILE PROPERTIES OF COMPOSITES

In this study, waste cotton fabric reinforced polymer matrix composite material has been manufactured by a custom made recycling extruder. Composites with different reinforcement ratios as (12,5%wt (12,5%wtRPE) and 25%wt (25%wtRPE) were tested for their mechanical properties such as tensile strength and young's modulus. The material was then granulated down to the size enough to be used in the extrusion process in order to observe the effects of reprocessing. Reprocessing leads to improve Tensile Strength of composite materials and slows down the reduction of tensile strength of polyethylene. It was observed that composite materials were highly affected by the fiber orientation and acts as anisotropic material under the load.