Effect of Temperature and Pressure on the Mechanical Properties of Kenaf Binderless Board

In recent years, natural fibers become an attraction to all people especially for researcher, scientist and engineer because natural fibers can be as substitute candidate for synthetic fibers. Due to their characteristics which are cheap, lightweight, less damage to processing equipment, renewable resources, and also good relative to mechanical properties, they are made to challenge the conventional fibers like glass and carbon. The purpose of this study is to investigate on mechanical properties of binderless boards from kenaf fiber. For hot pressing process, there are two required parameters need to be change. There were temperature and pressure that changed which for temperature were at 120 °C, 140 °C and 160 °C. For pressure, there were changed at 4 ton, 6 ton and 8 ton. Density, flexural and tensile test were conducted on the sample. Morphological analyses were done using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). From the result obtained, the maximum value of tensile stress was at specimen 8 ton at 140 °C which is 7.4 MPa and the flexural properties are 44.6 MPa. The changes of mechanical properties corresponding to the various temperatures and pressure during specimen preparation had been obtained.