The flame retardant synergism between highly stretched polymer fibres and intumescent flame retardant systems was investigated in self-reinforced polypropylene composites. It was found that the structure of reinforcement, such as degree of molecular orientation, fibre alignment and weave type, has a particular effect on the fire performance of the intumescent system. As little as 7.2 wt % addit...

The creation of highly oriented, co-extruded polypropylene (PP) tapes allows the production of recyclable ‘‘all-polypropylene’’ (allPP) composites, with a large temperature processing window and a high volume fraction of highly oriented PP (>90%). The wholly thermoplastic nature of these ‘self-reinforced’ composites implies that the mechanical performance may vary with temperature. This paper d...

This paper reports the results on the use of an innovative inert, based on stabilized fly ash from municipal solid waste incineration as a filler for polypropylene. The starting material, which contains large quantities of leachable Pb and Zn, was stabilized by means of an innovative process using rice husk ash as a waste silica source, together with other fly ashes, such as coal fly ash and fl...

In this work, we designed and studied two synthetic routes, based on modified Hummers method, to obtain graphene oxide (GO), investigated their influence the performance of polypropylene (PP)/GO nanocomposites. The routes differed in application condition oxidizing agent, potassium permanganate (KMnO4), which was added either as a powder (GO-P) or water solution (GO-S). This apparently subtle c...

Three-dimensional (3D) printed polypropylene (PP) structures mechanically reinforced with antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) nanoparticles (NPs) at various concentrations were developed and fully characterized. Nanocomposite filaments produced by an optimized melt mixing extrusion process, utilized as feedstock for the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) of specimens. Samples 3D assessed via mechanica...

Propene-hexene copolymers crystallize in a new polymorphic form of isotactic polypropylene when the concentration of hexene is higher than nearly 10-15 mol %. The hexene units are included in the crystals, inducing an increase of density that allows crystallization of 3-fold helical chains in a trigonal unit cell according to the space group R3c or Rc, where the helical symmetry of the chains i...

Radical photo-grafting polymerization constitutes a promising technique for introducing functional groups onto surfaces of polypropylene films. According to their final use, surface grafting should be done without affecting overall mechanical properties. In this work the tensile drawing, fracture and biaxial impact response of biaxially oriented polypropylene commercial films grafted with poly(...