A study on the post impact and open hole tensile strength of kenaf and kenaf/fibreglass hybrid reinforced composite / Zuraidah Salleh

Natural fibres have emerged as the potential reinforcement material for composite structures and have gained interest by many researchers. Due to their light weight and low costs when compared with synthetic fibre. Kenaf fibres recently have been considered as a substitute material in many weight-critical applications such as marine, automotive and other industries. Attemps to hybrid the kenaf fibre with the synthetic fibre such as fibreglass were carried out in this study to investigate the tensile properties of fibreglass reinforced kenaf composite. In this study, polyester natural fibre kenaf composites and kenaf/fibreglass hybrid composites were fabricated by using combination of hand lay-up and cold-press methods. The effect of different fibre types (powder, short fibres and unidirectional long fibres) on the tensile properties of the composites was investigated. The effect of volume fraction on the tensile strength of kenaf composites was also studied. The post impact tensile tests and open hole tensile tests of long kenaf fibre composites with and without the addition of fibreglass were carried out. The optimum tensile strength of kenaf composites was obtained at 25% volume fraction of long kenaf…