One of the primary objectives of this thesis was to design
fiber/filler/polymer structures for newsprint and in the process develop a greater
understanding of fiber/filler/ polymer structures. Five different designed structures were
created for study. The designed structures were composed of virgin, hydrosulfite
bleached, TMP southern pine, Georgian kaolin clay and various polymers. Five filler
levels from 0% to 20% were employed with each of these different structures. Numerous
physical tests were used to gather data which would help to develop an understanding for
the macroscopic properties of the structures.
Paper structures were created and data from bulk physical tests and particle
based SEM image analyses were compared. Comparisons were made using a statistical
method called Principal Component Analysis (PCA) where the data is grouped and
reduced to find data correlations not readily apparent in the raw data.
