Sugar Palm Fiber-Reinforced Composite

Currently, the availability of polypropylene, elastomer and sugar palm fiber (Arenga pinnata) is very abundant, which has a good impact on the potential for the development of new composite materials that have good properties and characteristics. Composites are generally a new material composed of two or more different materials with the aim of producing a new material that has better properties than the constituent material. In this study, polypropylene (PP) plastic and elastomer were used as a composite matrix reinforced with sugar palm fiber (Arenga pinnata). The purpose of this study was to determine the value of tensile strength, impact strength, and bending strength, of composites with a weight fraction of 20 % (80:20), 30 % (70:30), and 40 % (60:40). Based on the results of the research on hybrid composites of polypropylene and fiber-reinforced elastomers, composites with a weight fraction of 20 % (80:20) got the lowest tensile strength value of 1.153 MPa, while composites with a weight fraction of 40 % (60:40) obtained the highest tensile strength value of 2,613 MPa. Composites with a weight fraction of 20 % (80:20) got the lowest tensile strain value of 0.0049 and the highest tensile strain value was found in composites with a weight fraction of 40 % (60:40) of 0.0067. For the impact strength, the 40 % (40:60) weight fraction composite got the lowest value of 45248.234 kJ/mm2, while the 20 % (80:20) weight fraction composite got the highest impact strength of 17649.97 kJ/mm2. For bending strength results, the composite with a weight fraction of 20 % (80:20) obtained the lowest bending strength of 1.7778 MPa.