Evaluation of tensile strength of cattle horn reinforced RLDPE composite

Abstract

ABSTRACT Investigating novel natural fiber (NF) in developing and producing advanced composite materials (ACMs) is becoming most recent research domain among the material’s scientists and engineers. This occurred as a result of serious and unavoidable request to switch over from synthetic fibers which are non-renewable, decomposable and recyclable at their end of life and likewise costly. Treated cattle horn fiber (TCHF) was employed in this study to reinforce water sachet plastic waste using compounding and compression method. The disposed water sachet plastics acted as the source of recycled low density polyethylene (RLDPE) used in the research. Likewise, the cattle horns were picked randomly, cleaned and machined into fibers with the lengths of 6mm, 12mm and 18mm and then modified with 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 Normality of NaOH. Moreover, the proportions of matrix materials (RLDPE) were varied by 10% interval ranging from 70% to 90% and fiber loading from 10-30%. L-9 Taguchi array method was used to design and analyses the results in order to find the best combination of fiber length, fiber and matrix volume fraction, and proportion of NaOH that would give the optimum tensile strength. The result revealed that Sample with 0.1N, 6mm fiber length (CHFL) and 10% fiber loading (CHFV) has maximum tensile strength. This means that tensile property of cattle horn reinforced RLDPE did not depend on the higher fiber loading. Also NaOH contributed highest percent of 47.08% to the tensile strength while CHFV contributed 11.71% but tensile strength decreases with increment in fiber length. Keywords: cattle horn fiber; composite; plastic; recycling; and tensile strength