Abstract :
The notched Izod impact properties of
polypropylene (PP) filled with hollow glass beads
(HGB) have been measured at room temperature to
identify the effects of the particle contents, size and its
distribution on them in the present paper. The mean
diameters of the particles were 11, 35, and 70 lm, and
named TK10, TK35 and TK70 respectively. The surface
of the particles was pretreated with silane coupling
agent. The results showed that the notched Izod impact
strength (rI) of the filled systems increased gently with
increasing the volume fraction (/f) of the fillers when /f
was less than 15%, and then it decreased. When /f was
10%, rI decreased with an increase of the mean
diameter of the particles. Furthermore, the impact
fracture surface of the specimens was observed by using
a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The improvement
of the impact toughness of the composites might
be mainly attributed to the shear yielding first of the
matrix around the beads to absorb relevant deformation
energy under impact load.
