Investigation of Structure and Tensile Properties of Betel Palm Sheath

Abstract

Betel palm sheath is a kind of natural material which is increasingly used as a raw material for producing food packaging. To form packaging such as food plates, a raw palm sheath is drawn using drawing dies. Then, the excess edge of the drawn part is cut off with trimming dies. Due to the lack of understanding of the palm sheath structure and its mechanical properties, a lot of defective parts still occur during the production. In this work, the authors aim to investigate the internal structure of the palm sheath. The raw palm sheath was sectioned and subjected to a scanning electron microscope (SEM). In addition, the mechanical properties of the palm sheath were examined by the uni-axial tensile test. Based on the experimental results, the internal structure of the palm sheath was clearly revealed. The tensile properties of the palm sheath were highly anisotropic, namely the maximum load resistance and the elongation at break remarkably varied with the loading direction. Moreover, the deformation of the palm sheath appeared to consist of the elastic and the permanent deformation.