Subject- Chemistry

Investigatory project
on

TENSILE STRENGTH OF FIBRE IN

ALKALI & ACIDIC MEDIUM

Submitted to: Ms. Shipra Bhojak Ma’am

Submitted by: HARSH CHHANGANI
Class: XII ‘D’
 Index
 Acknowledgement
 Introduction
 Materials required
 Procedure
 Observation table
 Result
 Precautions
 Bibliography

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 Acknowledgement
I have taken efforts in this project. However, it
would not have been possible without the kind
support and help of many individuals. I would like to
extend my sincere thanks to all of them.
I am highly indebted to my teachers for their
guidance and constant supervision as well as for
providing necessary information regarding the
project and also for their support in completing the
project. I would like to express my gratitude towards
my family for their kind co-operation and
encouragement which help me in completion of this
project.
My thanks and appreciations also go to my
friends in developing the project and people who have
willingly helped me out with their abilities.

(Harsh Chhangani)
XII ‘D’

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 Introduction
Fibre
Fibre is a natural or synthetic string used as a component of
composite materials, or, when matted into sheets, used to make
products such as paper, papyrus, or felt.
Synthetic fibres can often be produced very cheaply and in large
amounts compared to natural fibres, but for clothing natural
fibres can give some benefits, such as comfort, over their
synthetic counterparts.

Natural Fibres
Natural fibres include those produced by plants, animals, and
geological processes and can be classified according to their
origin:
 Vegetable fibres are generally based on arrangements
of cellulose, often with lignin: examples include
cotton, hemp, jute, flax, ramie, sisal, bagasse, and banana. Plant
fibres are employed in the manufacture of paper and
textile (cloth), and dietary fibre is an important component of
human nutrition.
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 Wood fibre, distinguished from vegetable fibre, is from tree
sources. Forms include ground wood, lacebark, thermo
mechanical pulp (TMP), and bleached or unbleached kraft or
sulfite pulps. Kraft and sulfite (also called sulphite) refer to the
type of pulping process used to remove the lignin bonding the
original wood structure, thus freeing the fibres for use in paper
and engineered wood products such as fibreboard.
 Animal fibres consist largely of particular proteins. Instances
are silkworm silk, spider silk, sinew, catgut, wool, sea silk and
hair such as cashmere, mohair and angora, fur such as sheepskin,
rabbit, mink, fox, beaver, etc.
 Mineral fibres include the asbestos group. Asbestos is the only
naturally occurring long mineral fibre. Six minerals have been
classified as ‘asbestos’ including chrysotile of the serpentine
class and those belonging to the amphibole class: amosite,
crocidolite, tremolite, anthophyllite and actinolite. Short, fibre-
like minerals include wollastonite and palygorskite.
 Biological fibres also known as fibrous proteins or protein
filaments consist largely of biologically relevant and biologically
very important proteins, mutations or other genetic defects can
lead to severe diseases. Instances are collagen family of
proteins, tendon, muscle proteins like actin, cell proteins like
microtubules and many others, spider silk, sinew and hair etc.

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Man-made Fibres
Man-made fibres or chemical fibres are fibres whose chemical
composition, structure, and properties are significantly modified
during the manufacturing process. Man-made fibres consist of
regenerated fibres and synthetic fibres.
Semi-synthetic fibres
Semi-synthetic fibres are made from raw materials with
naturally long-chain polymer structure and are only modified
and partially degraded by chemical processes, in contrast to
completely synthetic fibres such as nylon (polyamide)
or Dacron (polyester), which the chemist synthesizes from low-
molecular weight compounds by polymerization (chain-building)
reactions. The earliest semi-synthetic fibre is the cellulose
regenerated fibre, rayon. Most semi-synthetic fibres are cellulose
regenerated fibres.
Cellulose regenerated fibres
Cellulose fibres are a subset of man-made fibres, regenerated
from natural cellulose. The cellulose comes from various sources:
rayon from tree wood fibre, Modal from beech trees, bamboo
fibre from bamboo, sea cell from seaweed, etc. In the production
of these fibres, the cellulose is reduced to a fairly pure form as a
viscous mass and formed into fibres by extrusion through
spinnerets. Therefore, the manufacturing process leaves few

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 characteristics distinctive of the natural source material in the
finished product. Some examples are:
 rayon
 bamboo fibre
 Lyocell, a brand of rayon
 Modal, using beech trees as input
 diacetate and triacetate fibre.
Historically, cellulose diacetate and triacetate were classified
under the term rayon, but are now considered distinct materials.
Synthetic fibres
Synthetic come entirely from synthetic materials such
as petrochemicals, unlike those man-made fibres derived from
such natural substances as cellulose or protein.
Fibre classification in reinforced plastics falls into two classes:
(i) short fibres, also known as discontinuous fibres, with a
general aspect ratio (defined as the ratio of fibre length to
diameter) between 20 to 60, and (ii) long fibres, also known as
continuous fibres; the general aspect ratio is in between 200 to
500.
Metallic fibres
Metallic fibres can be drawn from ductile metals such as copper,
gold or silver and extruded or deposited from more brittle ones,
such as nickel, aluminum or iron. See also Stainless steel fibres.
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Carbon fibre
Carbon fibres are often based on oxydized and
via pyrolysis carbonized polymers like PAN, but the end
product is almost pure carbon.
Silicon carbide fibre
Silicon carbide fibres, where the basic polymers are not
hydrocarbons but polymers, where about 50% of the carbon
atoms are replaced by silicon atoms, so-called poly-carbo-silanes.
The pyrolysis yields an amorphous silicon carbide, including
mostly other elements like oxygen, titanium, or aluminium, but
with mechanical properties very similar to those of carbon
fibres.
Fibreglass
Fibreglass, made from specific glass, and optical fibre, made
from purified natural quartz, are also man-made fibres that
come from natural raw materials, silica fibre, made from sodium
silicate (water glass) and basalt fibre made from melted basalt.
Mineral fibres
Mineral fibres can be particularly strong because they are
formed with a low number of surface defects, asbestos is a
common one.

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 Polymer fibres
Polymer fibres are a subset of man-made fibres, which are based
on synthetic chemicals (often from petrochemical sources) rather
than arising from natural materials by a purely physical process.
These fibres are made from:
 polyamide nylon
 PET or PBT polyester
 phenol-formaldehyde (PF)
 polyvinyl chloride fibre (PVC) vinyon
 polyolefins (PP and PE) olefin fibre
 acrylic polyesters, pure polyester PAN fibres are used to
make carbon fibre by roasting them in a low oxygen
environment. Traditional acrylic fibre is used more often as a
synthetic replacement for wool.
 Aromatic polyamids (aramids) such as Twaron, Kevlar and
Nomex thermally degrade at high temperatures and do not melt.
These fibres have strong bonding between polymer chains
 Polyethylene (PE), eventually with extremely long chains
/ HMPE (e.g. Dyneema or Spectra).
 Elastomers can even be used, e.g. spandex although urethane
fibres are starting to replace spandex technology.
 polyurethane fibre

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 Coextruded fibres have two distinct polymers forming the fibre,
usually as a core-sheath or side-by-side. Coated fibres exist such
as nickel-coated to provide static elimination, silver-coated to
provide anti-bacterial properties and aluminum-coated to
provide RF deflection for radar chaff. Radar chaff is actually a
spool of continuous glass tow that has been aluminum coated.
An aircraft-mounted high speed cutter chops it up as it spews
from a moving aircraft to confuse radar signals.

Microfibres
Microfibres in textiles refer to sub-denier fibre (such as polyester
drawn to 0.5 denier). Denier and Dtex are two measurements of
fibre yield based on weight and length. If the fibre density is
known, you also have a fibre diameter, otherwise it is simpler to
measure diameters in micrometers. Microfibres in technical
fibres refer to ultra-fine fibres (glass or meltblown
thermoplastics) often used in filtration. Newer fibre designs
include extruding fibre that splits into multiple finer fibres.
Most synthetic fibres are round in cross-section, but special
designs can be hollow, oval, star-shaped or trilobal. The latter
design provides more optically reflective properties. Synthetic
textile fibres are often crimped to provide bulk in a woven, non-
woven or knitted structure. Fibre surfaces can also be dull or
bright. Dull surfaces reflect more light while bright tends to
transmit light and make the fibre more transparent. Very short
and/or irregular fibres have been called fibrils.

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 Tensile Strength of Fibres
Depending upon the sources, the various types of fibres can be
classified into the following main three categories:
 Animal Fibres
 Vegetable Fibres
 Synthetic fibres

Besides their chemical composition and properties, most

important property of these fibres is their tensile strength,
meaning the extent to which a fibre can be stretched without
breaking and it is measured in terms of minimum weight
required to break the fibre. To determine the tensile strength of
nay fibre, it is tied to a hook at one end and weights are slowly
added to the other end until the fibre breaks.
Since peptide bonds are more easily hydrolyzed by bases than by
acids, therefore wool and silk are affected by bases and not by
acids. It is because of this reason that wool and silk threads
breakup into fragments and ultimately dissolves in alkalines.
In other words, alkalines decrease the tensile strength of animal
fibres (wool and silk), vegetable fibres (cotton and linen), on the
other hand, consist of long polysaccharide chains in which the
various glucose units are joined by ethers linkage.

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Since ethers are hydrolyzed by acids and not by bases, therefore
vegetable fibres are affected by acids but not by bases. In other
words, acids decrease the tensile strength of vegetable fibres. In
contrast, synthetic fibres such as nylon and polyester practically
remain unaffected by both acids and bases. Synthetic fibres owe
some of their chemical resistance to their more 'crystalline'
structure, i.e., there is greater regularity in the molecular
structure, and this regularity reduces the ability of bases or acids
to approach the amide bonds to initiate a hydrolytic reaction.
Materials & Chemicals Required
Weight Hanger & Weights
Hook
Sodium Hydroxide Solution
Dilute Hydrochloric Acid
Silk, Cotton and Nylon
Procedure
 Cut out equal lengths of a cotton fibre, nylon fibre and silk
fibre from the given sample.
 Tie one end of cotton fibre to a hook which has been fixed in
a vertical plane. Tie a weight hanger to the other end. Let
the thread get straight.
 Put a weight to the hanger and observe the thread stretch.
Then, increase the weights gradually on the hanger until the

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 breaking point is reached. Then note the minimum weight
needed for breaking the cotton fibre.
 Repeat the above experiment by tying nylon and silk fibres to
the hook separately and determine the tensile strength of
each fibre.
 Soak the woolen thread in a dilute solution of sodium
hydroxide for five minutes. Take it out from hydroxide
solution and wash it thoroughly with water and then dry by
keeping it in the sun. Determine the tensile strength again.
 Now take another piece of woolen thread of the same size
and diameter and soak it in a diluter solution of hydrochloric
acid for five minutes. Take it out, wash thoroughly with
water, dry and determine the tensile strength again.
 Repeat the above procedure for the samples of cotton and
nylon fibre.
Observation Table
S. Type Wt. required to Wt. required to Wt. required to
No. of break the break the Fibre break the Fibre
Fibre Untreated after soaking in after soaking in
Fibre dil. HCl NaOH Solution

1. Wool 750 gm 700 gm 750 gm

2. Cotton 75 gm 75 gm 50 gm

3. Nylon 375 gm 375 gm 375 gm

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 Result
 The tensile strength of woolen fibre decreases in alkalis but
practically remains unaffected on soaking in acids.
 The tensile strength of cotton fibre decreases on soaking in acids
but remains practically unaffected on soaking in alkalis.
 The tensile strength of nylon fibres remain practically
unaffected on soaking either in acids or in alikalies.

Precautions
 The threads must be of identical diameters.
 The length of the threads should always be same.
 The weights should be added in small amounts very slowly.
 The chemicals should be handled very carefully.

Bibliography
 Google
 Wikipedia
 Britannica Encyclopedia

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