Characterization and Investigation of Tensile Properties of Kenaf Fiber Reinforced Polyester Composite Material

Abstract

The kenaf fibers were used to reinforce composites with two structures: nonwoven and bulk fibers and with treated and untreated kenaf fiber. A series of tensile tests were conducted on these composites. The use of kenaf fibers allows having composite with improved mechanical properties compared to pure polyester composite. This increase reaches 56.15% in strength and 137.85% in strain when varying the fiber weight ratio and the reinforcement structure. The interested results for both tensile strength and strain are obtained for nonwoven structure made by untreated fiber. The statistical study reveals that the most influencing parameter in tensile properties was the reinforcement weight ratio. The optimum composite was obtained when using a nonwoven structure made with untreated fiber with 11.10% fiber weight ratio.

Keywords

• key-words: tensile test
• kenaf fiber
• polyester
• composite
• nonwoven
• statistical analysis