Chapter 4 - Areca sheath fibers, their composites and applications

Abstract

Composite materials offer good mechanical and dynamic performance with lower weight than classical materials. These specific properties have encouraged the use of composites in many industry applications such as automotive, construction or sports, among others. The abundant availability and accessibility of natural fibers are the major reasons for an emerging new interest in sustainable technology. Natural fibers, as reinforcement, have recently attracted the attention of researchers because of their advantages over other established materials. They are environmentally-friendly, fully biodegradable, abundantly available, nontoxic, nonabrasive, renewable, cheap, and have low density. Moreover, the progress towards green composites has become an important trend for industry and society, owing to rising awareness about environmental problems. Due to this, there is a great interest around the use of reinforcements and matrices obtained from renewable resources, such as natural fibers and biopolymers, thus leading to the development of new environmentally-friendly and more sustainable composite materials. The abundant availability and accessibility of areca sheath (fronds of areca) are the major reasons for an emerging new interest in sustainable technology. The natural areca sheath, as reinforcement, have recently attracted the attention of researchers because of them advantages over other established materials. From the present work, physico-chemical characteristics of the natural fibers are often considered as benchmarks while developing natural fiber reinforced composites for their potential uses in the structural applications. The physico-chemical characterization of single fibers is very scarce in the literature and this aspect has been addressed in the present work. The tensile and flexural properties of single ALS fiber, ALS as lamina and ALSRCs were found to be dependent on the surface modification. Single ALS fiber with 10% alkali treatment showed a maximum tensile load (12.78 N), 5% alkali treated ALS lamina exhibited maximum tensile load of 43.08 N, 7 year aged 10% alkali treated ALS shows highest tensile load (107.49 N). Least values were recorded for 3 years aged ALS laminae as compared to all other groups considered and 6 years – 5 layered - 10% alkali treated areca leaf sheath composites showing higher tensile load of 2503.86 N. And, the effect of surface modification was not found in the flexural tests on ALS laminae, due to which untreated areca leaf sheath laminae showed maximum bending load (41.71 N) individually. But, flexural strength of 4 layered – 10% alkali treated ALSRC was found 115.27 MPa and minimum flexural strength of 3.58 MPa is recorded for 1 layered - untreated ALSRC as compared to all other composites.