Abaca composition

The dimensions of cells (length, diameter) are highly variable, dependent on species, maturity, location (position) within the plant, and extraction procedures. Meaningful comparisons can be made only in terms of orders of magnitude. Harris [58] collected the most comprehensive set of data from different sources. Table 8.2 is a composite of these, and other data, for fibers of interest and some for purposes of comparison. From these data, it is quite clear that, on average, the unit cells of ramie, flax, and hemp are longer and coarser than the cotton fiber jute, abaca, and hemp yield the longest fibers, and abaca, henequen, and sisal yield the coarsest fibers. 

Composites from natural fibres have not yet been fully established in high-tech industry because a sufficient quality for engineering applications is not adequately offered (e.g. by Natural Fiber Composites Inc. and North Wood Plastics). Fibres are available from many plants (highlighted of high quality) for example, wood, abaca, coir, cotton, flax, hemp, henequen, istle, jute, kenaf, ramie, sisal or sunn. 

Teramoto, N., Urata, K., Ozawa, K. and Shibata, M. (2004) Biodegradation of aliphatic polyester composites reinforced by abaca fiber. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 86,401-409. 

Bledzki, A.K., Jaszkiewicz, A., and Scherzer, D. (2009) Mechanical properties of PLA composites with man-made cellulose and abaca fibres. Composites Part A, 40 (4), 404-412. 

Bledzki AK, Mamun AA, Jaszkiewicz A, Erdmann K et al (2010) Polypropylene composites with enzyme modified abaca fibre. Compos Sci Technol 70 854—860... 

PLA composites incorporating a range of cellulosic fibers have been reported, and include the use of flax [11], sisal [12], bamboo [13], short abaca [14], jute [15], lyocell... 

M. Ramesh, K. Palanikumar, and K.H. Reddy, Comparative evaluation on properties of hybrid glass fiber-sisal/jute reinforced epoxy composites. Procedia Eng. 51, 745-750 (2013). B.V. Ramnath, S.J. Kokan, R.N. Raja, R. Sathyanarayanan, C. Elanchezhian, A.R. Prasad, and V.M Maickavasagam, Evaluation of mechanical properties of abaca-jute-glass fibre reinforced epoxy composite. Mater. Des. 51,357-366 (2013). 

M.R. Rahman, M.M. Haque, M.N. Islam, and M. Hasan, Mechanical properties of polypropylene composites reinforced with chemically treated abaca. Compos. A 40, 511-517 (2009). 

Due to the increasing commercial interest for natural fiber-reinforced polymer composites as well as demands for environment friendly materials, the development of fully biodegradable plant fiber-PLA composites is on the rise. Different natural plant fibers have been employed with PLA to produce composites. The most studied natural fiber reinforcements for PLA were kenaf [10, 21-23], flax [24, 25], hemp [26], bamboo [27], jute [28], abaca [29], pineapple leaf [9], and wood fibers (WF) [30, 31]. In addition to these conventional plant fibers, recently reed fibers have been used for preparation of PLA composites [31]. 

Natural fibers vary widely in chemical composition, stmcture, and dimension and are obtained from different parts of the plants. Natural fibers, such as jute, ramie, flax, kenaf, and hemp are obtained from the stem abaca, sisal, banana and pineapple from the leaf cotton, coir, and kapok from the seed grass, and reed fibers (com, rice, and wheat) [4]. Climatic conditions, age, and fiber extraction... 

Agung EH, Sapuan SM, Hamdan MM, Zaman HMDK, Mustofa U. Study on abaca (Musa textilis Nee) fibre reinforced high impact polystyrene (HIPS) composites by tliermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Int J Phys Sci 2011 6 2100-2106. 

A. K. Bledzki, O. Faruk, and A. A. Mamun, Influence of compounding processes and fibre length on the mechanical properties of abaca fibre-polypropylene composites. Polimery 53, 120 (2008). 

Propylene composites with enzyme modified abaca fibre. Compos. 

Figure 6.4 Water sorption curves (a), postimmersion tensile (b). and flexural strength (c) for abaca and bagasse FRP composites [22].

Figure 6.12 Mechanical strength of untreated and alkali-treated continuous abaca fiber-reinforced furan resin composites [60].

Figure 6.13 Flexural strength of abaca/furan composite and abaca/ortho-UP composite at...

Tumolva, T., Kubouchi, M., Aoki, S, and Sakai, T. (2010) Water sorption in abaca and bagasse fiber-reinforced NFR composites. Proceedings of the First Japan Conference on Composite Materials, Kyoto, Japan, March 9-11, 2010. 

A. K. Bledzki, A. Jaszkiewicz and V. E. Sperber, Abaca and cellulose fibre reinforced polypropylene. In Proceedings of Fourth International Workshop on Green Composites, Tokyo, September 2006, pp. 1-5. 

---