Abstract:
Manufacturing new products with waste material has exposed a tremen dous contribute to sustainable waste management globally. Recently, natural fibres
have gained attention among researchers, engineers and scientists as an alternative
reinforcement for synthetic fibre-reinforced polymer composites due to low cost,
fairly good mechanical properties, high specific strength, bio-degradability and eco friendly characteristics. This project was carried out to investigate the tensile proper ties of waste based Natural Fibre Composite (NFCs) with the use of Rice Husk (RH)
as the reinforcement material and the low-density polythene (LDPE) as the matrix.
five types of waste based NFCs were developed by varying the weight fraction of
fibre to LDPE weight, and weight fractions considered in this study are 10, 20, 30,
40 and 50%. Simple techniques were used to manufacture NFCs, such as shredder
machine and hot press machine which do not need high expertise. Uniaxial tensile
test was carried out according to the ASTM D3039, using universal tensile testing
machine with displacement control loading method. Load, displacement and time
histories were obtained and further analyses were undertaken by obtaining Young’s
modulus, yield stress, yield strain, ultimate tensile stress, failure strain, resilience
modulus and toughness modulus for each variation. All types of NFCs with varying
RH content show behaviour of materials having typical nonlinear elastic–plastic
region. Research findings indicated that addition of 20–40% RH content provide
better overall performance under universal tensile behaviour, by mainly considering
the behaviour under elastic region and ultimate tensile strength.
