Examination of compressive and flexural behaviors of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene filled with hemp fiber particles

Effects of the addition of hemp fiber particles on the compressive and flexural behaviors of an industrially important amorphous thermoplastic, Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene (ABS), were investigated for the first time in this study. Particles with a size of 67–500 μm were first extracted from 10% NaOH alkaline-treated hemp fibers, and then incorporated into ABS at three various weight ratios (1wt%, 5wt% and 10wt%). Compression and three-point bending tests results revealed that both the compressive and flexural modulus of ABS increase with increasing particle content, but its compressive post-yield and flexural strengths decrease as enhancing particle content. The test results also showed that increasing particle content results in a significant improvement in the compressive modulus of ABS, but a slight enhancement in its flexural modulus. The notch-impact test results revealed that the impact strength of ABS is adversely affected by the incorporation of hemp fiber particles. The FT-IR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) analysis results indicated that mechanical bonding is formed between matrix and natural particles rather than chemical bonding. The SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) results put forth that the observed decrease in both the compressive post-yield and flexural strength is mainly due to the lack of strong mechanical bonding between ABS and particles. The three-point bending test data of the materials were satisfactorily reproduced using the linear Drucker-Prager material model in Abaqus engineering software.