Feasibility Study of Natural Fiber Composite Material for Engineering Application

Abstract

This paper presents a feasibility study of natural fiber-tin lead alloy composite material for engineering application. The specimen aluminum mold plate was made using a laser cutting machine. Rice husk was selected for introduction to the tin-lead alloy composite. Sand casting techniques and a hot press molding machine were used to produce the specimen. Three types of testing were used in these studies: tensile test, flexural test and hardness test. A new technique for preparing a natural fiber and metal matrix composite material using a manual mixer has been developed to stir the mixture uniformly during the solidification phase. The SiC particulate and rice husk as a natural fiber were introduced to the tin-lead alloy for engineering applications to maintain the hardness of the material. It was found that the mechanical properties of the fabricated composites increased through reinforcement with SiC and rice husk in the material matrix of Sn, particularly for flexural and hardness properties. However, the result shows the tensile strength not significantly improved as the tensile strength for the composite is lower than that for tin-lead alloy (60-40). The experiment also obtained better performance for the tensile modulus and flexural modulus. There is potential to use rice husk in Sn composite material for engineering applications.

Keywords

• feasibility study
• natural fiber
• composite material
• engineering application