Isratul Rahmad
LDS Team 2012

ABSTRACT

Fracture behaviour of pineapple leaf fibre reinforced polyester composite is investigated in this research. The main interest in this research is to analyze the effect of fiber orientation, namely 90^o and 45^o, respect to crack propagation. The fracture toughness testing has been conducted according to ASTM D5045 standard. The result reveal that in generally the critical load regarding to crack propagation for composite with 45^o fiber orientation has higher value than composite with 90^o fiber orientation. The elastic energy tends to decrease significantly along with increasing initial crack length for composite with 90^o fiber orientation. In contrast, the elastic energy tends to decrease slightly along with increasing initial crack length for composite with 45^o fiber orientation. Furthermore, the excellent crack resistance has been shown by composite with 45^o fiber orientation.
  
Keywords : natural fiber composites, pineapple leaf fiber, fiber orientation, fracture toughness.