Heru Suryanto, Yudy Surya Irawan, Rudy Soenoko, Poppy Puspitasari, Aminnudin
Over the previous few years, natural fibers have been used as the main reinforcement for composite materials. Natural fibers have been offering many advantages in the recent years. The benefits of natural fiber composites that compared to composites with synthetic fiber reinforcement are low price, low density, being easily separated, being abundantly available, being renewable, being biodegradable, and having no health hazard. Nowadays investigation on properties of natural fiber reinforced polymer composite is the most attractive area for researchers. Research and development efforts have been carried out to find new use for mendong fiber as reinforcement material in polymer composites in electrical applications. So, this research objective is to know the crystalline properties and functional group of mendong in presence of electric fields. The methods were extraction of mendong fiber using mechanical procedure, both XRD and FTIR analysis, and AC electric fields treatment of 250, 500, 750, 1000 V/cm with frequency of 1 kHz. Results show that crystallinity of the fiber structure is 70% and after an exposure to an electric field, the crystallinity of the fiber slightly decreased of 2% in the treatment of the electric field of 250 V/cm. Indications of functional groups still lies in the same wavelength range of numbers but some of functional group was changed in spectrum shape because of polarity transformation in fiber. © 2016 Author(s).
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Brawijaya University, Indonesia
