Features and Property of Sisal Fibre:

» Sisal fibers are smooth, straight and yellow in colour.

» Sisal is fairly coarse and inflexible so the sisal fibre can be long or short.

» Sisal is valued for cordage use because of its strength, durability, ability to stretch, affinity for certain dyestuffs, and resistance to deterioration in saltwater

» In natural fibres, the flaws or weak links are irregularly spaced in the fibre, the strength will depend on the length of the fibre used for the tensile test (McLaughlin, 1980)

» In the case of sisal fibre tensile strength and percentage elongation decrease with increase in test length and Young’s Modulus and Average Modulus increase with test length. When speed of testing increases the Young’s Modulus and tensile strength increases.(See Table 1 and 2)

»The comparison of sisal fibre polyester composites with other natural fibre is shown in Table 3 by using Charpy test with pendulum impact-testing machine using a pendulum load of 0.4 kgs.  It can be seen from table 3 that sisal fibre composites have the maximum work of fracture followed by pineapple fibre composite. Banana and coir fibre composite have comparatively low work of fracture. It is a generally accepted fact that the toughness of a fibre reinforced composite is mainly depending on the fibre stress-strain behavior. Strong fibres with high failure strain impart high work of fracture on the composites. From the table it is interesting to note that, among sisal, pineapple and banana fibre reinforced polymer composites, sisal fibre-polyester composites is likely to give high work of fracture because of the high toughness of sisal fibre which is found in agreement with the experimental results. However, the large difference observed between banana and pineapple fibres is not explained by taking into account of their comparative mechanical properties. Similarly, very low toughness cannot be expected for coir composites because of the high toughness of the fibre.