Chemical Treatment on Rattan Fibers: Durability, Mechanical, Thermal, and Morphological Properties

Abstract

The current research endeavor explores the durability, thermal, mechanical and morphological properties of untreated and various chemically treated rattan fibers to find its potential as reinforcement in fabrication of advanced composite materials. The extracted rattan fibers were gone through various chemical treatments (i.e alkali and acrylic acid). The most important limitation of plant fibers use is low material durability. So the durability of treated rattan fibers has been investigated in three different mediums. Here the results of experiments on rattan fibers were presented. From the results, it is observed that acrylic acid–treated fibers are found to retain higher percentages of their initial strength than all other fibers, after the specified period of exposure in the various mediums. Further, their characterization was done using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) studies. Hence, acrylic acid–treated fibers can be a good potential candidate for reinforcement in polymeric matrices for the fabrication of advanced composite for different structural applications.