Flexural properties of random and unidirectional arenga pinnata fibre reinforced epoxy composite

This paper investigates the flexural properties of Arenga Pinnata fibre reinforced epoxy composite (APREC) in relation to its fibre arrangement. The composites were produced using Arenga Pinnata fibre as the reinforcement material and epoxy resin as the matrix. In this work, two types of Arenga Pinnata fibre arrangement were under-studied, randomly distributed and unidirectional distributed (UD). Samples were prepared at 10vol%, 15vol%, 20vol%, and 25vol% of fibres reinforcement to matrix ratio for both types. Three-point bending configuration flexural tests were performed for both randomly distributed APREC and UD APREC at 10vol%, 15vol%, 20vol%, and 25vol% respectively. Results indicated that UD APREC have better flexure modulus and flexure strength for all the fibre loading percentages (vol%) as compared against the randomly distributed APREC. The 25vol% UD APREC showed the highest modulus (3.783 GPa) with an increment of 31.0% as compared against the pure epoxy (2.888 GPa). It was also observed that there was no significant increment on flexure strength for both random and unidirectional APREC as compared to pure epoxy (61.125 MPa), but the flexure strength value decreased for randomly distributed fibre orientation for all fibre volume percentages (vol%).