Study of the reuse potential of the sisal fibers powder as a particulate material in polymer composites

The present work studied the reuse of sisal fiber powder, contaminated by industrial oil, resulting from the activities of a Brazilian textile industry. With the objective of reusing the contaminated sisal fiber powder residue, harmful to the environment, this work evaluate the potential of the use this sisal powder as reinforcement in composites. Natural fibre reinforced polymer composites became more attractive structural materials due to their high specific strength, lightweight and biodegradability properties. The mechanical behaviour of polyester resin based natural polymeric composites, made by using experimental planning (granulometry of sisal powder, fiber content and with or without styrene). Thus, combination of analysis of variance (ANOVA), response surface methodology (RSM) and experimental methods allowed evaluated, analyzed and validated the mechanical properties. The results obted showed that the waste from the sisal industry exhibits potential application in reinforcing composite materials Thus, different values of mechanical properties can be obtained by different interactions of the entry variables. Thus, the condition that exhibited high results of mechanical behavior independent of the addition of styrene were the particle size and fiber content 1680 μm and 2.5%, respectively. Therefore, the best results were stress (0.59 MPa), strain (5.68%), tenacity (2.01 E-05 MJ/m³) and energy at break (14 J) for the composite reinforced with sisal powder.