Improvement of the Degradation of Tensile and Impact Strength of Water-aged Sisal Fiber-reinforced Polyester Composites: A Comparative Study on the Effects of Hybridizations, Hybrid Layering Sequences, and Chemical Treatments

Evaluating Sisal Fiber-Reinforced Gypsum Composites for Water Absorption and Mechanical Performance

“…Te basic raw material (reinforcement) used to prepare the experimental composites was sisal (Agave sisalana) fber (in the form of short-chopped and unidirectional long fber). Sisal leaves were collected from the mountains of Mekelle, Tigray, northern Ethiopia [18,19]. Te fbers in the form of short-chopped and unidirectional long fbers were prepared by the manual extraction process with the fbers initially treated by washing using distilled water in a beaker and combed and dried for 3 days to avoid any moisture and fber residue.…”

“…Impact strength is a material's capability to resist a sudden applied load or force. It is an important material property used for the design of construction and other structural members [18,19,25,26]. Te impact tests were performed using the Charpy-type impact tester (Pendulum Impact Testing Machine, Model: SI-42, Impact Energy 150 J), and hardness tests were performed by the Rockwell hardness test.…”

“…where W o and W d are the weights of the specimen before and after water absorption [18,19,28]. All tests were performed at room temperature and at a relative humidity of 50%.…”

“…Considering the current environmental awareness and the increasing interest in advanced lightweight and sustainable materials, the use of natural fbers has become a common practice owing to their appealing characteristics [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Te main advantage of using natural fbers is their high energy-absorbing capacity resulting from their low modulus of elasticity [15][16][17][18][19]. In the last decades, due to the increasing demand for natural fber-based composites, much research has been carried out using hemp, jute, abaca, coir, wool, and sawdust [2,12,[20][21][22] to investigate their utilization in construction [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

“…Te main advantage of using natural fbers is their high energy-absorbing capacity resulting from their low modulus of elasticity [15][16][17][18][19]. In the last decades, due to the increasing demand for natural fber-based composites, much research has been carried out using hemp, jute, abaca, coir, wool, and sawdust [2,12,[20][21][22] to investigate their utilization in construction [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Te high availability of low-cost natural fbers may constitute a good opportunity, such as producing low-cost gypsum-based composites for civil construction.…”