Research Article Composites Based on Polypropylene and Talc: Processing Procedure and Prediction Behavior by Using Mathematical Models Laiza Marinho Racca, 1 Elen Beatriz Acordi Vasques Pacheco, 1,2 Luiz Carlos Bertolino, 3 Cristiane Xavier da Silva Campos, 4 Monica Calixto de Andrade, 5 Ana Maria Furtado de Sousa , 6 and Ana Lúcia Nazareth da Silva 1,2 1 Instituto de Macromol´ eculas Professora Eloisa Mano, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, ZIP/Post 21941-598, RJ, Brazil 2 Programa de Engenharia Ambiental, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, ZIP/Post 21941-909, RJ, Brazil 3 Centro de Tecnologia Mineral (CETEM), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil 4 CENPES/PETROBRAS, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil 5 Instituto Polit´ ecnico do Rio de Janeiro, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Nova Friburgo, ZIP/Post 28.625-570, Brazil 6 Instituto de Qu´ ımica, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, ZIP/Post 20550-900, RJ, Brazil Correspondence should be addressed to Ana L´ ucia Nazareth da Silva; ananazareth@ima.ufrj.br Received 6 March 2018; Accepted 20 September 2018; Published 1 November 2018 Academic Editor: Gary Wysin Copyright © 2018 Laiza Marinho Racca et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. iPP/Talc composites were produced, with diferent methods of fller addition in iPP matrix. Two diferent grades of Talc were used for comparison. Te tensile tests results showed that talc particles promoted an improvement in composite rigidity, indicating the reinforcing efect of the talc particles in the iPP matrix. However, PP/talc-based composites that were prepared from a masterbatch and with talc grade with smaller particle size showed a better efciency on dispersion/distribution of particle fller on the thermoplastic matrix, resulting in an improvement in Young’s modulus property, even with higher fller contents. SEM analyses evaluated the composite morphologies and diferent mathematical models were used as a tool on prediction of mechanical behaviour of the materials. It was observed that the results of Young’s modulus of the composites can be adjusted by diferent models, depending on the talc characteristics and the mixing procedure used. 1. Introduction Te production of composites has been widely studied, once there is a large fller variety available, as well its features. Because of this, inorganic fllers are ofen compounded into thermoplastic polymer for reducing the cost of plastic prod- ucts and improve some properties, such as rigidity, impact strength, hardness, wear resistance, and toughness. Tese fnal properties may vary, depending on dispersion degree of fller on polymer matrix, beyond the interaction level between composite phases. It is also important to consider composite design protocol that fllers are available in several shapes and sizes, which leads diferent properties in the fnal composite [1–12]. According to literature, the factors which afect inorganic fller’s performance on the composition are as follows [7, 8]: (a) Filler content: fllers tend to have a signifcant infuence on properties of composites in a certain content range. Above a critical concentration value, the fller amount is such that there will be interactions between particles (cluster formation), generating stress concentration points, which will afect the mechanical properties. (b) Size and particle size distribution, in general, are used the ones with 1-10 microns. Fillers with high particle size usually are tension accumulators, which act as a fracture propagation points, and besides promote an increase in viscosity (and a consequently difcult processing), while very small particles are difcult to disperse and may agglomerate, forming large particles due Hindawi Advances in Condensed Matter Physics Volume 2018, Article ID 6037804, 8 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/6037804