A Combined Self-Consistent Method to Estimate the Effective Properties of Polypropylene/Calcium Carbonate Composites

In this work, trying to avoid difficulty of application due to the irregular filler shapes in experiments, self-consistent and differential self-consistent methods were combined to obtain a decoupled equation. The combined method suggests a tenor independent of filler-contents being an important connection between high and low filler-contents. On one hand, the constant parameter can be calculated by Eshelby's inclusion theory or the Mori⁻Tanaka method to predict effective properties of composites coinciding with its hypothesis. On the other hand, the parameter can be calculated with several experimental results to estimate the effective properties of prepared composites of other different contents. In addition, an evaluation index σ f ' of the interactional strength between matrix and fillers is proposed based on experiments. In experiments, a hyper-dispersant was synthesized to prepare polypropylene/calcium carbonate (PP/CaCO₃) composites up to 70 wt % of filler-content with dispersion, whose dosage was only 5 wt % of the CaCO₃ contents. Based on several verifications, it is hoped that the combined self-consistent method is valid for other two-phase composites in experiments with the same application progress as in this work.