Investigations on Dielectric Constant of Coir Powder-Reinforced PVC Composites

ABSTRACT

In recent times, there is an intensive growth toward investigation and creation of the green fiber composites due to its abundance and cost-effective, renewable, and environmentally-safe features. Natural fiber-based composites are rapidly replacing synthetic fiber-based composites in electrical engineering applications but being limited due to poor electrical insulation properties. Hence, an attempt is made in this study to improve the electrical insulation properties of coir fiber (powder form)/polyvinylchloride composite by optimizing the variables viz. fiber content (wt.%), particle size (in μm), and chemical treatments using Box–Behnken design. Thus, the results are optimized using the analysis of variance to achieve the low dielectric constant (2.256) for the combination of chemical treatments (triethoxy(ethyl)silane), fiber content (2 wt.%), and particle size (179.5 μm), which are suitable for the electrical insulation products. Additionally, a conformity test is executed and error was found to be 2.54%.

Graphical abstract

摘要

近年来，由于其丰富、成本效益高、可再生和环境安全的特点，绿色纤维复合材料的研究和开发得到了大力发展. 天然纤维基复合材料本质上是环保的，在电气工程应用中正在迅速取代合成纤维基复合物，但由于电绝缘性能差而受到限制. 因此，本研究试图通过使用Box-Behnken设计优化纤维含量（wt.%）、粒径（μm）和化学处理等变量来改善椰壳纤维（粉末形式）/聚氯乙烯复合材料的电绝缘性能. 因此，使用方差分析对结果进行了优化，以实现适用于电绝缘产品的化学处理（三乙氧基（乙基）硅烷）、纤维含量（2 wt.%）和粒度（179.5 μm）组合的低介电常数（2.256）. 此外，进行了一致性测试，发现误差为2.54%.pf介电常数.

KEYWORDS:

• Cocos nucifera powder
• chemical treatments
• Box–Behnken design
• P-polyvinylchloride
• hydraulic-injection molding
• resonance method

关键词:

• 椰子粉
• 化学处理
• Box-Behnken设计
• P-对聚氯乙烯
• 液压注塑

Highlights

• BBD approach is used for designing the experiments.

• Injection molding machine is used to fabricate the composites.

• ANOVA is used to identify the relevance of individual process variables.

• Silane and fiber content (2 wt.%) with size (179.545 μm) gives the lower DC.

• Lower DC functions as an insulator for electronic products.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their gratitude to Strength of Materials Laboratory, School of Mechanical of engineering, VIT, for their testing facility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors contribution

Aravindh: Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review and Editing, Visualization, and Project Administration. Gopalan Venkatachalam: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, and Supervision.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.