THE EFFECT OF SLS TREATMENT ON TENSILE PROPERTY OF COCONUT FIBER REINFORCED EPOXY COMPOSITES

Abstract

A study on the effect of fiber length and fiber surface modification on tensile propertyof alkaline treated coir fiber reinforced epoxy composites is presented in this paper. The fibersurface treatment was carried out using Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) solution at five differentconcentrations, 2%, 4%, 6%, 8% and 10% respectively. Each group of the coir fiber was treatedfor 10 days. For each group the coir fibers experiments were conducted for different fiber lengthsnamely 10, 20, and 30mm. The SLS treated coir fiber was used as a reinforcement and epoxy wasused as a matrix to fabricate the composites. The tensile strength of different samples ofcomposites was measured. Increased SLS concentration in fiber treatment was found to increasethe tensile strength up to 4% and further increase in SLS concentration reduced the tensilestrength, also, experimental results showed that an increase in fiber length increased tensilestrength. The maximum tensile strength of the composite was found to be uniformly occurring for4% SLS with 30mm fiber length composite samples. Based on the nonlinear regression analysisthe tensile strength equation was proposed for coir fiber reinforced epoxy composites.