The high growth of Water Hyacinth/Eichhornia crassipes (WH) led to several problems such as ecosystem, irrigation, and sedimentation. The rapid growth of water hyacinth in natural rivers, reservoir, lake and canals causes drainage problems in many nations. As a result, local offices must spend significant annual budgets to dispose of water hyacinth wastes. Meanwhile, cellulose fiber from WH had a potential application in natural fiber composite (NFC). This study investigated the development and use of water hyacinth wastes for the production of unidirectional dan weaved fiber epoxy resin composites. The purpose of this research is to investigate at the mechanical and physical properties of unidirectional WH and woven fiber reinforced epoxy resin composites in variation of 0 % wt., 15 % wt., 25 % wt. and 35 % wt. of WH fibers. The WH fiber was obtained from a mechanically processed WH plants. The composites were manufactured through the hand lay-up method. The tensile and impact tests were carried out based on ASTM D3039 and ASTM D6110 respectively, while the density of composites was tested based on the Archimedes rule. The results of this study showed that increasing of % wt. of the WH woven fiber, the tensile strength of composite decrease. The impact strength of composites increases by the rise of % wt. of the WH woven fibers. The % wt. of WH woven fibers was in direct proportion to the amount of pore or void between the fibers and matrix, which led to a delamination mode fracture. Tensile and impact strength of unidirectional WH fiber increase by increasing the % wt. of WH fibers.
Keywords: Composite; Epoxy-resin; Unidirectional fiber; Water hyacinth; Woven fiber.
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