Jaswar Koto

The Comparison of Impact Energy and Three Point Bending Properties on Coconut Fiber Composite for Marine Application

The development of high performance materials made from natural resources is increasing worldwide. The interest in natural fiber reinforced polymer composite materials is rapidly growing both in terms of their industrial applications and fundamental research. They are renewable, cheap, completely or partially recyclable, and biodegradable. Coconut fiber can be a potential candidate to replace the industrial core and foam and it may be applied worldwide. Tougher materials such as coconut fiber need higher energy or impact to break or fracture. So, this means that it can absorb more energy applied on it. A specimen with lower absorbed energy means it is brittle and has a lower toughness, which can break easily and cannot withstand sudden high loads. The higher the resulting numbers the tougher the material, which is coconut fiber with 2.035 J followed by 3D core PET foam and infusion grooved PVC foam which are 0.977 and 0.95 J, respectively. The flexural strength for coconut fiber shows the highest value which is 65.306 MPa even though the thickness of the specimen is lower compared to others. The 3D core PET foam shows 9.661 MPa and the infusion grooved PVC foam is 7.102 MPa. The Young’s modulus reflects the stiffness of a material. Therefore, the coconut fiber exhibited a little lower stiffness than the 3D Core PET foam in flexural testing. It should be mentioned that the lower characteristic of elasticity for the coconut fiber improved the impact strength but reduced the stiffness, which might help to explain the lower Young’s modulus of the coconut fiber. It can be proven that coconut fibers are suitable to be used as one of the laminating materials for fiberglass boat building.