Mechanical Properties of Environment-Friendly Sugar Palm FibreReinforced Vinyl Ester Composites at Different Fibre Arrangements

摘要

A study on mechanical properties of sugar palm fibre reinforced vinyl ester (VE) composites atdifferent fibre arrangements is presented in this paper. Hand lay-up method was used in preparingthe composites and the mechanical properties were determined using the INSTRON universaltesting machine. Some fractured specimens from the impact test were tested under scanningelectron microscope (SEM) to study the interfacial adhesion between fibres and matrix. Resultsrevealed that unidirectional fibre composites demonstrate excellent performance in tensile mod-ulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, and impact strength, with value of 2501 MPa, 93.08MPa, 3328 MPa, and 33.66 kJ/m 2 , respectively. It is only for tensile strengths, that the highestvalue was given by ±45° woven fibre composites (15.67 MPa). Therefore, composites with fibresin unidirectional direction can be considered as the best fibre arrangement for sugar palm fibrereinforced VE composites compared with other fibre arrangements such as 0°/90° woven fibres,and ±45° woven fibres based on the results obtained throughout the tests.