Relative humidity and temperature dependence of mechanical degradation of natural fiber composites^(?)

In this paper,the mechanical degradation of natural fiber composites is studied with the consideration of the relative humidity and the temperature.A nonlinear constitutive model is established,which employs an internal variable to describe the mechanical degradation related to the energy dissipation during moisture absorption.The existing experimental researches demonstrated that the mechanical degradation is an irreversible thermodynamic process induced by the degradation of fibers and the damages of interfaces between fiber and matrix,both of which depend on the variation of the relative humidity or the temperature.The evolution of the mechanical degradation is obtained through the determination of dissipation rates as a function of the relative humidity and the temperature.The theoretically predicted mechanical degradations are compared with experimental results of sisal fiber reinforced composites subject to different relative humidity and temperatures,and a good agreement is found.

Hydrolytic Degradation Behaviors of Poly(p-dioxanone) in Ambient Environments

The effects of temperature and relative humidity on the hydrolytic degradation of poly（p-dioxanone）（PPDO） were investigated. The hydrolytic degradation behaviors were monitored by tracing the changes of water absorption, mechanical and crystalline properties, molecular weight and its distribution, surface morphologies, as well as infrared absorption peaks and hydrogen chemical shifts during the degradation. It is found that the water absorption increases whilst the intrinsic viscosity, tensile strength and elongation at break decrease as the temperature or relative humidity increases. With degradation time growing, the molecular weight drops and its distribution broadens. The crystallinity of PPDO has a tendency to increase at first and then to decrease, while the crystalline structure is not significantly changed. At the same time, some cracks are observed on the surface and keep growing and deepening. All results show that temperature plays more significant roles than relative humidity during the degradation. The analyses of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and hydrogen nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy reveal that the degradation of PPDO is a predominant hydrolysis of ester linkages.