An Investigation On Physical, Mechanical And Morphological Behaviour Of Corn Starch Reinforced With Alkaline Treated Pineapple Leaf Fibre

Mohd Nawar, Nur Qurratu Aini (2018) An Investigation On Physical, Mechanical And Morphological Behaviour Of Corn Starch Reinforced With Alkaline Treated Pineapple Leaf Fibre. Project Report. UTeM, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Recently, natural fibre reinforce composite (NFPC) is knowingly as attentive source and have potential replacement over common synthetic fibres in several applications that commonly related to automotive and construction industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate the physical, mechanical and morphological behaviour of natural composite of corn starch reinforced alkaline treated pineapple leaf fibre. Composites can be defined as material with multifunctional system that have certain characteristic which cannot be found in other discrete material. Previously, pineapple plant is not fully utilised and has become as the agriculture waste until the researchers found that pineapple leaf can be turned into fibre that is beneficial to certain industries and applications. Due to rapid technology era and high knowledge people nowadays, pineapple leaf fibre has been used widely for composite production because the fibre own good mechanical properties and shows superior properties based on the high cellulose content and low microfibrillar angle (Kengkhetkit and Amornsakchai, 2012). Several steps have been done to evaluate the physical, mechanical and morphological behaviour of natural composite between pineapple leaf fibre and corn starch. Initially, pineapple leaf fibre and corn starch was prepared according to the certain fibre loading. Several tests were conducted on the samples to determine the physical properties such as moisture content, water absorption and density. Regarding to the results obtained, all of these physical properties is increase linearly with the increasing fibre loading wt%. Besides, mechanical properties such as tensile, flexural strength and hardness also determined by mechanical tests. The results show that tensile properties is optimum at 60 wt% while for the flexural strength is maximum at 40 wt% fibre loading. Based on this study, the physical and mechanical properties are depending on the fibre loading wt%. The characterization of the fracture tensile also figured out by conducting Scanning Electron Method (SEM). Work frame also provided as for better improvements in the future.

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