Effect of Alkali Treatment on Mechanical Properties of Sisal Woven Fabric Reinforced Epoxy Composites

Abstract

In thiswork, woven sisal fabricrein force depoxy composites werefabricated by hand lay-up technique. To investigate the effect of alkali treatment on the mechanical properties of the resultant composites, the sisal fabrics were soaked in 4% w/v NaOH solution for one hour and pre-dried in an oven at 800C for one hour before using them in composite fabrication.Specimens for mechanical testing were prepared based on ASTM D638, ASTM D3410, ISO 179:1997 and ASTM D790 standards. From the test results, the mechanical properties of alkali treated composites were found to be higher than those of untreated composites. For instance, the tensile, flexural and compressive strengths increased by 12.59%, 11.36% and 23.46% respectively while the tensile, flexural and compressive moduli of the composites increased by 31.19%, 12.97% and 34.98% respectively as a result of alkali treatment. This shows that alkali treatment of sisal fibres improves the mechanical properties of the resultant composites due to increased fibre-matrix interfacial bonding.