Evaluation on properties of composite materials containing Caryota fiber (CF) for wall roof applications.

In recent days, synthetic fibers are replaced by natural fibers in composite materials, due to their eco-friendly nature. Because of this reason, in this research work, the Caryota fibers were extracted from the fishtail form tree and to investigate the static mechanical, thermal, and water absorption properties. The mechanical properties of 6ATCF composite had occurred the maximum tensile strength (72.24 MPa), flexural strength (71.03 MPa), and impact strength of (9.36 kJ/m²) in the static mechanical analysis due to their good bonding between the fiber and matrix. Comparably, the 6ATCF composite had 43%, 38%, and 44% improvement in the tensile, flexural, and impact to the 2UTCF composite. The 2UTCF has observed more amount of water absorption weight percentage, because of the shortening of fiber length in the composite. However, the 8ATCF composite had provided a high residual mass of 22.56% and low thermal conductivity of 0.189 W/m–K in the thermal analysis compared to the other composition. In addition, for finding the interfacial properties of surface roughness of fiber, fiber fracture, fiber pullout, matrix crack, and voids are analyzed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM). Subsequently, the natural composite is utilized as a substitute material for roof sheets and to reduce heat transfer through buildings and energy conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]