AbstractThe objective was to study the fiber length degradation during compounding of glass fiber with polypropylene. The effect of parameters such as viscosity, total work, concentration on fiber length and dispersion was studied using an automatic particle size analyzer. The length degradation is most severe during the very first stage of the process, i.e., when fiber bundles are being filamentized. The mode of glass fiber incorporation into the melt (fiber addition to the molten resin versus to polypropylene powder prior to compounding) was found to have no effect on the final fiber length. Matrix resin viscosity affects the fiber length significantly. Concentration dependencies of fiber length for different times of compounding suggest that the degradation results from both fiber‐fiber and fiber‐melt interacti
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