Abstract—The mechanical properties of varying percentage mass fraction, Mf, of empty fruit bunch (EFB) palm fibre/epoxy composite, ranging from 0 to 30% was investigated. A predefined weightage of loose EFB fibre was manually distributed within the effective area of the mould cavity surface. The fibre mat was subsequently wetted with epoxy and subjected to curing under compression. Enhancement was observed in the EFB loaded composite as compared to pure epoxy. Composite with 27% of EFB showed the greatest improvement in the measured tensile strength (14.8%) and Young’s modulus (87%). However, there was a reduction in elongation at break with increasing fibre loading. Similar trend was observed for flexural test whereby the flexural strength and flexural modulus showed an increasing trend with the addition of EFB fibre.
Index Terms—Flexural, empty fruit bunch, epoxy, tensile.
K. Y. Tshai and T. L. Wong are with the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, The University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor, Malaysia (e-mail: kim-yeow.tshai@nottingham.edu.my, kedy1wtk@nottingham.edu.my).
E. H. Yap is with the School of Energy and Resources (UCL Australia), University College London, Torrens Building, 220 Victoria Square, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia (e-mail: e.yap@ucl.ac.uk).
[PDF]
Cite: Kim Y. Tshai, Eng H. Yap, and Tang L. Wong, "The Effects of Weight Fraction on Mechanical Behaviour of Thermoset Palm EFB Composite," International Journal of Materials, Mechanics and Manufacturing vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 232-236, 2016.
![[Click]](http://www.ijmmm.org/img/ijmmm_v7n2_inspec%28IET%29_indexscreenshot.jpg){kind=link}