Pengaruh Perlakuan Alkali terhadap Kekuatan Tarik dan Morfologi Komposit Serat Tebu Prgepoxy

Abstract

Since the discovery and use of composite materials, the development of plastics has greatly increased, especially in the aerospace, automotive and other industries. The composite uses a binding material (matrix) in the form of epoxy itself which has good adhesive properties and a reinforcing material or filler in the form of fiber. The fiber used in this study was PRG bagasse fiber. The type of method in this study uses the hand lay-up method, which is an open mold process. The research was conducted to determine the effect of alkali with variations of soaking 2 hours, 4 hours and 6 hours on the tensile strength and morphology of the PRG-Epoxy bagasse fiber composite. Soaking time of PRG bagasse fiber in NaOH (5%) can affect the resulting strong properties. The highest tensile strength value was obtained in the 2-hour immersion variation with a tensile test value of 26.3 N/mm2 and the lowest tensile strength value was obtained in the 6-hour immersion variation with a yield of 23.84 N/mm2. The results of morphological observations using micro tests can be seen that there are still many composite bonds that are still imperfect, especially in the 6-hour immersion variation where the fibers have been damaged so that their binding power decreases.