Experimental study on the effects of surface treatment reagents on tensile properties of Banana fiber reinforced polyester composites

The interaction of the matrix and fiber at the interface between them plays an important role in the mechanical properties of a composite. Poor adhesion across the interface due to its hydrophilic nature results in weak bond and poor mechanical properties and is taken to be a major limitation. This study focuses on the effects of various surface treatment reagents in improving the tensile properties of the banana pseudo stem reinforced polyester composites. An unsaturated polyester composites reinforced with fibers well above 200mm and laid at 0o to the loading direction were produced using hand lay-up method. The result shows that the tensile strength and tensile modulus of unreinforced polyester resin was 31.26±0.02MPa and 973.47±0.9MPa respectively while the tensile strength of the untreated fibers was 141.46±1.9MPa and 0.4MNaOH mercerized fibers gave the highest single fiber tensile strength of 84.32±1.2MPa at 1hour among the NaOH concentrations. The tensile strength of acetic acid and sodium sulphite post-treated mercerized fibers reinforced composites was 97.02±2.5MPa and 108.30±0.6MPa respectively, while silane solution gave the highest improvement in tensile strength of the composite of 142.61±2.2MPa with a tensile modulus of 3,798.89±5.8MPa. It was concluded that acetic acid, sodium sulphite are good surface treatment reagents but less effective to 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) silane solution for the improvement of the tensile properties of banana pseudo-stem fiber reinforced polyester composites for industrial applications.