Typha fiber reinforced polyester composites: tensile properties and statistical analysis

This article presents the study of the tensile characteristics of the Typha fiber reinforced polyester composites. Composites have been developed by hand lay-up technique with different Typha fibers treated conditions (sea water, alkali and combined treatment), different volume fraction and reinforcement origin (Leaf or Stem fibers) and structure (mixture of fibers or nonwoven structure). The experimental results indicated an improvement in tensile strength with increasing fiber content. Thus, a maximum tensile strength was observed and was equal to 24.58 and 25.07 MPa, respectively, for a fiber content of 12.6% of the leaf fibers and 10.3% of the typha stalk fibers. Mercerization has successfully modified the structure of fibers and improved the performance of Typha fiber composites by promoting better fiber to resin bonding. Statistical analysis shows that the optimum solution was obtained by using a bulk structure having a rate of 12.6% for the extracted fibers from the chemically treated stems.