Effect of chemical treatment on the thermo-mechanical properties of the natural fiber-reinforced composites
Alok PATEL, Sanjit BISWAS, Sarada Prasad PARIDA
Abstract. Nowadays, the management of agricultural waste is a major challenge for authorities and its burning is still uncontrolled that causes severe health issues. In other hand, shortfall in conventional wood awakened researchers to fabricate new composite variants such as natural fiber reinforced polymer composites. However, the use of natural fibers could not incur sufficient mechanical and thermal strengths in the composites. In this work, to demonstrate the sustainable change in thermal and mechanical properties in composites by chemical treatment; alkali treatments of the rice straw and husk are carried out. Hybrid-composite specimens are manufactured by hand layup process, mechanical (hardness, impact, tensile, and flexural) and thermal tests (TGA/DTG, flammability, and thermal absorption) are conducted. Comparative studies show that about a 30-40% rise in mechanical strength and thermal stability is achieved by alkali treatment advocated by SEM finding that shows alkali treatment enables superior fibre-matrix bonding.
Keywords
Chemical Processing, Alkali Treatment, Na-OH, Epoxy, Rice-Straw
Published online 5/10/2026, 6 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Alok PATEL, Sanjit BISWAS, Sarada Prasad PARIDA, Effect of chemical treatment on the thermo-mechanical properties of the natural fiber-reinforced composites, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 65, pp 58-63, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904138-9
The article was published as article 9 of the book Processing and Characterization of Materials
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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