Manufacture and Performance of Textile-ramie Fiber Reinforced Anionic Polyamide 6 Composites

Abstract

A vacuum assistant resin infusion moulding (VARIM) was adopted to prepare a new-style and environmental friendly thermoplastic composite consisting of anionic polyamide-6 (APA-6) and textile-ramie fiber. However, the intensive polymerization-inhibition and fiber-discoloration phenomena were found in the reactive processing. In order to overcome these problems, two methods were used to suppress the reaction between the ramie fiber and APA-6, which are the surface modification of ramie fiber and a new initiator with a low activity. Finally, the inhibition and discoloration phenomena were suppressed significantly, which overcame the major challenge during the preparation of ramie fiber reinforced APA-6 composites by reactive processing. The composites showed a good polymerization during VARIM process. The tensile strength and flexural modulus of the obtained composites were increased by 21 % and 26 % respectively compared with that of pure APA-6. It is important to find that there were some interactions between APA-6 and ramie fiber, which produced a good interface characters. This work not only opens new avenues for the development of renewable composites, but also further broadens the applications of the natural fibers.