Tensile and Flexural Properties of Oil Palm Fibre Reinforced Phenol Formaldehyde Composites

Oil palmempty fruit bunch (OPEFB) is one of the lignocellulosic materials, which has a great relevance to Malaysia as a large quantity of the biomass that is generated by oil palm industries. In this research, OPEFB fibre was used to study the effect affiber loading in the oil palm fibre reinforced phenol formaldehude composites. The composites toere prepared using different oolume fraction percentages of emptu fruit bunch (EFB) fibre tohicli were 40%, 50% and 60% and for the matrix, phenol formaldehude (PF) resin toas used. The tensile and flexural testing results were carried out. The results showed that the tensile strength composites unin 40 vol% EFB fibre had tensile strength of 4.1345 MPa while for the composite with 50 vol%: and 60 vol% is 4.7643 and 5.1412 MPa. The flexural strength for 40 voI%, 50 vol% and 60 vol% are 7.0784 MPa, 7.3016 MPa and 7.4143 MPa respectively.