A Comparative Study on the Tensile Strength of Single Natural Fibers

Abstract

Abstract In recent times, material scientists have been paying great attention to the replacement of synthetic materials with natural materials in the essence of minimizing global climate change and environmental pollution. This study intends to extract natural fibers such as sisal, false banana, and banana plant fibers and characterize their mechanical properties. Mechanical and chemical treatment was employed to obtain the optimum cross-sectional area (CSA) of the fibers. The quality of the fiber and the CSA of each fiber was examined using a Zeta 20 optical 3D microscope. The tensile strength of each type of single fiber was evaluated using A Textechno Statimat Me + Tensile Testing Machine with the help of thick paper as a specimen holder. The values of the tensile strength of each type of fiber were compared to see their relative advantage. The result also revealed that chemical treatment increased the quality of the fiber and simplified the determination of the CSA of the fiber from its diameter. Furthermore, the false banana fiber demonstrates a higher tensile strength and tensile strain than those of sisal and banana fibers, but it has a lower modulus of elasticity. The linear density and tenacity of false banana were also lower than sisal fiber, but slightly higher than banana fiber.