Fabrication and study of mechanical properties of eco-friendly banana fibre-natural rubber latex composites

The necessity for the development and use of naturally occurring materials as a replacement for synthetic and environment hazardous materials has become a requirement of the time. The rapid depletion of petroleum products from which most synthetic polymers are developed also adds to the situation. In this context, an elastomer composite using natural materials like natural rubber latex and 40% v/v natural banana stem fibre (long, continuous, unidirectional) is developed for both longitudinal (0°) and transverse fibre orientations (90°) and its mechanical properties were tested. Tensile strength and tear strength for 0° fibre orientations were found to increase by 101.4% and 183.7% over pure latex sample. For the 90° fibre-oriented rubber latex samples also showed improvements in tensile and tear strengths. Copyright © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.