Effect of Immersion Media for Polyester Composite Reinforced with Chicken Feathers on Creep Behavior

Abstract

The use of composite materials has expanded in industrial applications around the world, reinforcing composites with waste materials like (chicken feather) is one of the effective ways to solve environmental concerns compared to traditional methods, as it is considered one of the renewable and inexpensive methods in addition to its presence in abundance. The main added features of composite materials over classic materials are the light-weight. This paper investigates the effect of immersion media for a polyester composite reinforced with chicken feather fillers to enhance the creep characteristic. The composite was manufactured using a hand-layup process. The samples were produced by varying the weight ratios of fiber loading (0 %, 0.2 %, 0.4 %, 0.6 % and 0.8 %) and immersed in three different media (KCl (salt media), NaOH (alkali media) and HNO₃ (acid media)). The creep samples were tested according to ASTM standards. The results show that chicken feather–reinforced composites immersed in various media have probable applications because of their superior mechanical properties over non-reinforced composites.