Residential housing is a critical aspect of human living and in developing countries this is a mirage due to high cost of building materials. In order to meet the needs for affordable housing with low cost materials as well as meet required fire safety standards, this research developed flame retarded fibreboards with oil palm residue reinforced in polyester resin, incorporating 0, 12 and 18% flame retardant loading using hand lay-up compression moulding. The fibreboards were tested for impact, thermal and flammability properties. Based on experiments, it was found that 12% aluminum tri-hydroxide fibreboard meets the impact and thermal limitations while the 18% hybrid formulation meets the required fire safety standard for building interior applications which will benefit rural dwellers in Nigeria and in similar climes around the world seeking to substitute conventional materials with the advantage of low cost, easy to process, biodegradable, environmentally benign and flame retarded composite material.

Summary Wood‐based polymer composites represent a growing interest in the building industry. The fire response of this composite type is a concern to many end users. This study utilizes wood sawdust as reinforcement to develop flame retarded wood sawdust polyester composite (WSPC) panel. Flame retardant (FR) chemicals such as aluminium tri‐hydroxide (ATH), intumescent FR (ammonium polyphosphate [APP] Gum Arabic Powder [GAP]), and the combination of ATH and APP‐GAP (hybrid) at 0%, 12%, and 18% were used to modify the WSPC panel using hand lay‐up compression moulding technique. Tensile and flexural properties, thermal and flammability properties, and macroscopic image observations (MIOs) were examined using universal testing machine, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA/DSC), and the cone calorimeter apparatus (CCA), respectively. The results obtained show that the added nonhybrid FR in the WSPC panel enhanced the tensile and flexural strength while a reduction in the tensile modulus was observed. In the thermal stability, TGA analysis reveals that the added hybrid FR did not exhibit significant change in the thermal stability of the WSPC panel while cone calorimeter results show significant improvement in some fire properties. It can be concluded that the hybrid FR when incorporated in WSPC panel can be of great benefit to the building industry.

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Summary Oil palm fibre reinforced polyester composite (OPFC) was modified with aluminium tri‐hydroxide (ATH), ammonium phosphate and gum arabic (APP‐GAP) intumescent compound, and their hybrid (ATH/APP‐GAP) flame retardants (FRs) at 0%, 12%, and 18% proportion using hand lay‐up compression moulding technique. The effect of the FR loadings on impact strength, flammability properties, and flame propagation were examined using an impact tester, cone calorimeter apparatus (CCA), and flame spread apparatus (FSA), respectively. The results shows that the FRs added to OPFC enhanced the impact strength of the composite showing greater absorbed energy for 0%OPFC and 12%APP‐GAP specimens. CCA results reveal that 18%ATH/APP‐GAP hybrid specimen enhanced the flammability properties better at 50 kW m−2, while at 25 kW m−2, the performance of the specimens varied in properties with content and type of FR loadings. FSA results reveal that with 18%ATH/APP‐GAP hybrid specimen, weakest flame energy for propagation and less flame travel distance could be achieved and suggests a better FR. This paper concludes that the hybrid FR specimen can be of great benefit to the building and transportation industries.

Composite laminates have distinct interface comprising reinforcements from both synthetic or natural sources and polymers which make them favourable in the world of composites due to the intrinsic benefits they possess. Composite laminates from natural sources have shown to be highly susceptible to flame and have been improved by the addition of flame retardants (FR) during processing. The effect of the FR on the mechanical behaviour of these composite laminates is quite unclear and has not been given the in-depth attention. In this paper, the effect of FR of two set of composite laminates on mechanical failure was assessed. The two set of composite laminates comprising oil palm fibre composite (OPFC) and wood sawdust composite (WSC) were processed with polyester resin and six (6) FR using hand-lay compression moulding. The FRs were derived from aluminium tri-hydroxide (ATH), ammonium polyphosphate (APP), gum Arabic powder (GAP) and carbon black (CB) at 12%, 15% and 18% loading ratios. Specimen cut from the composite laminates were tested for failure under tensile and flexural loading using the universal testing machine (UTM). The results obtained shows that the addition of 15%APP-GAP/CB in WSC and 12%APP-GAP in WSC exhibited an outstanding performance in improving tensile and flexural strength of the composite laminates by 154% (from 9.67MPa to 24.56MPa) and 103.4% (from 42.14MPa to 85.7MPa) respectively compared to those without FR while the FR in OPFC did not show any significant improvements. It can be concluded that FR with particulate reinforcement could improve the mechanical behaviour of composite laminates as a suitable reinforcement. Suoware, T. O. | Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology, Federal Polytechnic, Ekowe, Bayelsa State, Nigeria