The Effect of Fiber Length on Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Roselle Fiber-Reinforced Polylactic Acid Composites via ANSYS Software Analysis

Abstract Nowadays, natural fiber is used in any application development owing to its high demand in the market especially in automotive, aerospace, food technology manufacturing process, and other branches. The purpose of using natural fiber in any application is to replace synthetic fiber products in our daily life. Natural fiber has many benefits in terms of low manufacturing cost and easy processing to produce a new product. Natural fiber is a biodegradable material and low-cost reinforcement material. The main reason natural fiber demand has started to rise drastically is its eco-friendly nature that affects greenhouse gases. Natural fiber also has a high potential to be in used polymer composites as the reinforcement material for any engineering application. Polylactic acid (PLA) is a biodegradable thermoplastic, and less number of reported papers are found on the detailed properties of PLA composites. In this chapter, roselle-reinforced PLA composite properties were investigated by using the ANSYS software. The results will be beneficial as references to proceed with the decision of procedure or fabricating the composite product. The investigation was focused on the effect of fiber length on the mechanical and thermal properties. The ANSYS Workbench 16.0 is used to draw the dimension of PLA, 150 mm  × ×  15 mm  × ×  3 mm, and four different parameters of fiber length, which are 2, 3, 4, and 5 mm. The steady-state thermal and static structural analysis process in ANSYS was used to analyze the effect of three different fiber lengths on the mechanical and thermal properties after the meshing process. Different values of force were applied at the right and left sides of the sample design. From the obtained results, when the length of fiber increases, the thermal deformation of the composite product decreases and the mechanical properties improve.