Paper number 1052

THE AGAVE FIBERS IN COMPOSITE MATERIALS

Ridha BEN CHEIKH, Sami BEN BRAHIM, Mohamed BAKLOUTI, Béchir HADJ SASSI

Ecole Nationale d'Ingenieurs de Tunis, BP 37, Le Belvédère, 1002 Tunis, Tunisia

Summary

A new method to extract the agave fibers from the leaves is described. It consists of hydrolysing the leaf in 3N NaOH aqueous solution during 48 hours followed by a dioxane washing. The extracted fibers have medium performances compared to glass fibers (tensile modulus : 11.52GPa, tensile strength : 475.1MPa, deformation : 18.2%). We worked different composite test tubes using unsaturated polyester and polyepoxyde matrix reinforced by 1 to 5 Agave fibers. We compared their mechanical behaviour under one direction strength to composite test tubes reinforced by glass fibers and we have noticed that for the same fibers filling up, the performances of composites reinforced by agave fibers is near equal to those reinforced by glass fibers. We have also noticed that the agave fibers adhere to polyester and polyepoxyde matrix better than the glass fibers.

Keywords

agave fibers, sisal fibers, natural fibers, polyester agave composite, polyépoxydeagave composite.