Effect of Chemical Solution on Tensile Strength of Bamboo Fiber

Abstract

© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd. This study aims to investigate the effect of a chemical solution on the tensile strength of the bamboo fiber. The bamboo woods were cut into the size of small pieces 60 mm x 5 mm x 1 mm. Seven solutions were used in this work which is distilled water (control conditions), ASH and NaOH solution with concentrations of 20%, 10%, and 5% by weight. The bamboo pieces were soaked in the solution with 11 different soaking times except soaking in distilled water for 5 different soaking times. After that processed bamboo pieces were washed and dried at room temperature for 1 week. They were separated by hand to get processed bamboo fiber with cross-section size between 0.06-0.27 mm2. For all specimen, more than 5 pieces of processed bamboo fibre were tested following to ASTM D3039. The results show that the cross-section area in rang 0.06-0.27 mm2 from raw materials have similar tensile strength with 290 MPa [1]. The higher concentration of NaOH, the lower value of the tensile strength which decreases and reach below 100 MPa for 20% NaOH solution. For ASH solution, the values of the tensile strength as the function of soaking time are the same inclination with the different concentration. The tensile strength of processed bamboo fibres is pretty splattered between 200-400 MPa for the soaking time less than 48 hours. While tensile strengths have the range between 275-300 MPa for the soaking time more than 48 hours. Because some fungus grew on bamboo fibre surface soaked in distilled water, the tensile strength of processed bamboo fibres soaked in 20% ash solution is greater 100 MPa than the tensile strength of bamboo fiber soaked in distilled water for the soaking time more than 120 hours.