Abstract. Flax fibre was modified with acetylation. The influence of the acetylation on the structure and properties of flax fibre were investigated as well as modified flax fibre reinforced polypropylene composites were also prepared. The catalyst was used to accelerate acetylation reaction rate. Flax fibre was characterised after modification. Surface morphology, moisture absorption property, components content, degree of polymerisation, crystallinity of cellulose and thermal stability of flax fibres were studied. Due to acetylation, the flax fibre surface morphology and moisture resistance properties improved remarkably. Flax fibre (modified and unmodified) reinforced polypropylene composites were fabricated with 30 wt% fibre loading. The mechanical properties were investigated for those composites. Tensile and flexural strengths of composites were found to increase with increasing degree of acetylation up to 18% and then decreased. Charpy impact strengths of composites were found to decrease with increasing degree of acetylation. Owing to addition of coupling agent (maleated polypropylene -MAH), the tensile and flexural strength properties were found to increase in between 20 to 35% depending on degree of acetylation.

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The role of negative ions on the charging of dust grains in a plasma is examined. Two models for negative ion distributions are considered. These are streaming negative ions and Boltzmannian negative ions. It is found that the effects of the negative ion number density, negative ion charge, and negative ion streaming speed significantly affect the dust grain surface potential or the dust grain charge.

The basic features of nucleus-acoustic (NA) envelope bright and dark solitons, which exist in degenerate quantum plasmas, have been theoretically investigated by deriving the nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation. The reductive perturbation method, which is valid for a small but finite amplitude limit, is employed. It is found that the bright envelope solitons are modulationally unstable, whereas the dark ones are stable. It is also observed that the fundamental properties (viz. Modulational instability (MI) growth rate, width and energy concentration of NA waves, etc.) of NA unstable bright envelope solitons are significantly modified by constituent particles number density. The implications of our results obtained from our present investigation in astrophysical compact objects like white dwarfs and neutron stars are briefly discussed.

A strongly coupled dusty plasma containing strongly correlated negatively charged dust grains and weakly correlated (Maxwellian) electrons and ions has been considered. The effects of polarization force (which arises due to the interaction between thermal ions and highly negatively charged dust grains) and effective dust temperature (which arises from the electrostatic interactions among highly negatively charged dust and from the dust thermal pressure) on the dust-acoustic (DA) solitary and shock waves propagating in such a strongly coupled dusty plasma are taken into account. The DA solitary and shock waves are found to exist with negative potential only. It has been shown that the strong correlation among the charged dust grains is a source of dissipation and is responsible for the formation of the DA shock waves. It has also been shown that the effects of polarization force and effective dust-temperature significantly modify the basic features (e.g., amplitude, width, and speed) of the DA solitary and shock waves. It has been suggested that a laboratory experiment be performed to test the theory presented in this work.