Fabrication and Characterization of Banana Fiber Reinforced Unsaturated Polyester Resin Based Composites

Concerning the importance of composite material for multi-purpose applications, an attempt has been taken to synthesize composites using natural fiber with unsaturated polyester resin. Since the use of synthetic polymer plays a key role in polluting the environment, we have used natural fiber (banana fiber) as an alternative source. Our approach dealt with the preparation of reinforced composites by hand lay-up technique using 20 % banana fiber (by weight) as reinforcing materials. Several techniques were applied to characterize synthesized composites e.g. universal testing machine (UTM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). UTM facilitated the measurement of the tensile strength (TS), tensile modulus (TM), elongation at break (EB), bending strength (BS), and bending modulus (BM) while functional groups were confirmed by FT-IR and the morphology of the composites was investigated by SEM. Observed results revealed that the TS, TM, BS, and BM followed an increasing fashion of 100%, 53%, 75%, and 55% respectively with respect to the matrix materials. On the other hand, the EB of the composite reduced drastically by 50%. Hence, higher mechanical properties were obtained for the banana fiber reinforced composites (BFRC) than the unsaturated polyester resin (UPR) matrix.