Study on Mechanical Behaviour of Sugarcane Bagasse Fiber Reinforced Polymer Matrix Composites

Abstract

Availability in natural fibers and easy of manufacturing have tempted researchers to try locally available inexpensive fibers and to study their feasibility of reinforcement purposes and to extent they satisfy the required satisfied of good reinforced polymer composite for other applications. With minimum low cost and high specific mechanical properties, natural fiber represents a good renewable and biodegradable alternative to the most common synthetic reinforcement, i.e. glass fiber. In this study, a series of epoxy based composites reinforced with sugarcane bagasse waste fiber are fabricated. Bagasse is considered to be a by-product of the milling process after production of sugar. Bagasse (fibrous residue) is essentially a waste product that causes mills to incur additional disposal costs. Bagasse is main use as a burning raw material in the sugar cane mill furnaces. The low caloric power of bagasse make a low efficiency process also sugar cane mill management encounters problems regarding regulations of clean air from the environmental protection agency, due to the quality of the smoke released in the atmosphere. Present 85% in bagasse production is burnt. Even so, there is an excess of bagasse. Usually this excess is deposited on empty fields altering the landscape.