Tensile and impact behaviour of rice straw-polyester composites

Abstract

Rice straw fibres have been extracted and incorporated in polyester resin matrix to prepare rice straw reinforced polyester composites and the tensile and impact properties of the resultant composites studied. The rice straw fibres have a tensile strength of ~ 69.72 MPa and Young’s modulus of ~ 2427 MPa. The composites have been formulated up to fibre volume of about 40%, resulting in a mean tensile strength of 46 MPa which is greater than that of plain polyester (31.5 MPa). The tensile modulus of composite is found to be 1045 MPa which is about 1.66 times to that of plain polyester. The specific tensile modulus is nearly 2.17 times to that of polyester resin. The work of fracture measured in impact at a fibre volume of 46% is found to be 284 J/m. Therefore, the straw-based composites have potential to be used as core material for structural board products.