Analysis of Tensile Strength of Bamboo Reinforced Polyester Composite

Abstract

Nigerian grown species of bamboo called bambusa vulgaris which was examined to analyze its tensile strength. The fibre characteristics and tensile strength were investigated at three different fibre lengths and fibre loadings i.e 10, 30,50mm and 10, 30, 50 wt.% respectively. Fibre length was varied in each fibre loading from 10mm to 50mm, the tensile strength of the three different series of composites varies from 28.32Mpa to 38.10Mpa. The predicted optimum tensile strength is 44.51Mpa. Generated results have been validated by the confirmation of experiments at three replications, when the control factors were set at 30mm and 30% wt or (level 2, level 2), using Taguchi’s design of experiments approach. It was observed from the analysis of variance of the samples that there is a variation in the increase of tensile strength of the bamboo that are dependent on the fibre length and fibre loading used. The percentage contributions of parameter according to the pooled ANOVA for signal-toNoise ratio showed that the fibre length (36.61%) in controlling variation and mean strength is significantly smaller than the fibre loading (44.15%).