Investigation of mechanical properties of luffa fibre reinforced natural rubber composites: Implications of process parameters

Abstract

Natural fiber-reinforced composite materials are highly beneficial due to their excellent strength-to-weight ratio, and the compression molding process is frequently used to prepare natural fiber composites. The primary objective of the present work is to optimize the process parameters of the compression molding method to prepare luffa fiber-reinforced natural rubber composite and investigate the influence of process parameters on mechanical properties. Pre-processing parameters, specifically oven-dry temperature and time, processing parameters such as soaking temperature, time, and compression pressure, and post-processing parameters, such as oven-dry temperature and time, were considered to optimize. Natural rubber in its latex phase is utilized as a matrix material, and luffa fiber is used as reinforcement. The Plackett-Burman screening design technique was employed to identify the impact of different processing parameters on the mechanical properties of the luffa fiber-reinforced natural rubber (LNR) composite, and based on Taguchi's design of experiments, several process parameters were utilized to create L27 orthogonal array and the mentioned composites prepared accordingly. The ASTM standard is followed while testing the composite samples to determine their density, shore A hardness, and tensile strength. The density of the composite is unaffected by the process parameters; however, the shore A hardness of the composite is significantly affected. All the processing parameters most significantly impacted the tensile strength of LNR composites. The optimized process parameters for preparing LNR composite are the pre-oven temperature of 65 °C and time of 150min, the soaking temperature of 75 °C and time of 5min, compression pressure of 1.5 MPa, and the post-oven dry temperature of 55 °C and time of 45min. LNR composite can absorb energy due to its rubber matrix, making it useful for high-impact applications.