Investigation on the effect of alkaline treatment on mechanical properties of banana fibre polymer composite

摘要

Nowadays, use of natural, cellulosic fibres as reinforcing fillers for commodity plastics has received much attention because of a number of advantages over traditional, inorganic ones such as good specific strength, high toughness, and good thermal insulation, less abrasion, minimal dermal and respiratory irritation, biodegradability, and natural abundance. For high performance composites bast fibres, extracted from the stems of plants such as jute, kenaf, flax, ramie, and hemp are widely accepted as the best candidates due to their very good mechanical properties. However, lack of good interfacial adhesion, low melting point and poor resistance to moisture absorption make the use of natural fibre reinforced composites less attractive. Chemical treatment of the fibre can clean the fibre surface, chemically modify the surface, stop the moisture absorption process and increase the surface roughness. In this work, banana bast fibres were modified using NaOH of 6% concentrations. Morphological and structural changes of the fibres were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In the present work, banana fibre with different proportion was used as reinforcements to polymer based matrices. The effects of fibres content on mechanical properties of banana fibre composite materials were studied.