Modeling of water diffusion mechanism in polypropylene/date palm fiber composite materials

The aim of this work is to model the water absorption mechanism of the polypropylene/date palm fibers composite materials after their exposure at different immersion conditions. For short immersion period, a model combining the Fick's law and the time temperature stress principle has been proposed to describe the water absorption mechanism. However, it has been noted that, after a saturation time, the water diffusion mechanism leads to a physical degradation and a mass loss into the composite material, especially under high temperatures and long times of water immersion. Microscopic observations have revealed a decrease of the interfacial adhesion between the fibers and the matrix and fiber degradations. A general new model describing the evolution of the water uptake mechanism and the degradation phenomenon has been also proposed in the present work. A good agreement between the theoretical and experimental data has been obtained.