Study Of Comparative Mechanical Characterization Of AFRICA FAN PALM ( BORASSUS AETHIOPUM) PETIOLES AND SAW DUST PARTICLE REINFORCED UREA-FORMALDEHYDE COMPOSITES

Abstract

A research work on the polymer particleboard composites using Africa fan palm petioles (AFPP) fibre and saw dust (SD) fibre as reinforcement and urea -formaldehyde (UF) as matrix was carried out. Composites of particleboard were formulated with varying weight fraction of reinforcements: 90%, 80%, 70%, 60% and 50% to 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% urea formaldehyde. The mechanical properties of the composites where ultimate tensile strength (UTS), young’s modulus, elongation at break, hardness strength and impact strength were analysed. The results show an improvement in the mechanical properties with increased in weight fraction of urea - formaldehyde (UF) matrix. Optimum results were observed at 50% weight fraction of urea-formaldehyde (UF) matrix. The results indicated that the AFPP particleboards had better properties compared to SD particleboards, thus AFPP can serve as a better substitute for wood in high-performing composites.