Abstract


Banana fibers obtained from the stem of banana plant (Musasapientum) have been characterised for their diameter variability and theirmechanical properties, with a stress on fracture morphology. The nature of representative stress strain curves and fracture at different strain rates have been analysedthrough SEM.


Introduction


Natural fibers present important advantages such as lowdensity, appropriate stiffness and mechanical properties and high disposabilityand renewability. Moreover, they are recyclable and biodegradable. There hasbeen lot of research on use of natural fibers in reinforcements. Banana fiber,a ligno-cellulosic fiber, obtained from the pseudo-stem of banana plant (Musasepientum), is a bast fiber with relatively good mechanical properties.


The "pseudo-stem" is a clustered, cylindricalaggregation of leaf stalk bases. Banana fiber at present is a waste product of banana cultivation and either not properly utilized or partially done so. Theextraction of fiber from the pseudostem is not a common practice and much ofthe stem is not used for production of fibers. This is reflected from therelatively expensive price of banana fibres (Table I) when compared toother natural fibres. The buyers for banana fibers are erratic and there is nosystematic way to extract the fibres regularly. Useful applications of suchfibres would regularize the demand which would be reflected in a fall of the prices.


Price of differentnatural fibres


Natural Fibre

Price($/kg)

Flax

0.15-0.21

Hemp

0.15-0.60

Kenaf

0.15-0.30

Banana

0.43-0.81*


*The price at which the author sourced the fibers from twodifferent places in India.





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About the Authors:


The authors: Samrat Mukhopadhyay and Raul Fangueiro areassociated with the University of Minho, Portugal and Yusuf Arpa and lkŞentrk are associated with the Ege University, Turkey.

 

Thearticle was originally published in Journal of Engineered Fibers and FabricsVolume 3, Issue 2-2008 http://www.jeffjournal.org