Tensile Strength of Some Natural-Fibre Composites

The conversion of natural fibre into biocomposites is rapidly being exploited globally. Locally,there are some viable natural fibres that can be utilised for this. In this research project,several types of composites were produced,all of which were made from natural fibres. Four different natural cellulosic fibres were chosen,namely,kenaf,pineapple (pina),banana and coir. Hybrids of kenaf blended with each of these fibres were also woven. The samples were woven manually as weft yarn while the warp yarn used plied polyester thread. The samples were fabricated into composites using four types of matrices which were epoxy,polyester,polypropylene and polyethylene. The composites were fabricated using the manual compression method. These composites were then tested for their tensile strength in weft direction. All results were also analysed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and ranked accordingly. It was found that woven samples made of 100% kenaf fibre exhibited the best tensile strength for all types of resin while coir was found to be the poorest. All kenaf hybrid composites mostly exhibited better results than the non-hybrid composites.