Manufacturing Defects, Interfacial Adhesion, Impact and Water Absorption Properties of Hybrid Polyester Composite in Boat Construction

Fibre composite boat construction industry is one of the largest industries that greatly contributes to most of the countries’ economies. Synthetic fibre composite like fibreglass is widely used in making the composite boat hull. The use of fibreglass is costly and it gives a huge effect on the environmental pollution. Nowadays, the green fibres have growth as a demand in hull construction and another industry, because of their light mass, great relative mechanical properties, and more advantages to the fibreglass. The demand for boat from green hybrid materials has gone in striking. Green hybrid materials, like any other composite components used in industries, went through the process of incorporating the reinforcement which is the natural fibre into composite or matrix. All imperfections such as voids, area where resin has unevenly wetted the fibre and misaligned fibres have been determined using non-destructive technique (NDT) namely Infrared Thermal (IR) imaging technique. Then composite specimens were observed via the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). SEM micrograph had been validated the results of IR thermal imaging, impact test and water absorption by following ASTM D6110 and ASTM D570 standard respectively. 45% of the woven kenaf/glass fibre to polyester determines the highest impact properties of 542.22 kJ/m2 and shows the least percentage of moisture absorption at the same time showing the greatest water resistance for the composite material. The defects and interfacial adhesion were observed on the specimen by IR thermal imaging and SEM technique. It was revealed that 45% of the woven kenaf/glass fibre to polyester demonstrated less manufacturing defects and possessed a good interfacial adhesion, while 60% of the woven kenaf/glass fibre to polyester showed the highest manufacturing defects. The consequence of fibre contents had crucial effect towards manufacturing defects and interfacial adhesion of composite testing coupon. As conclusion, the specimens with less manufacturing defects, high impact properties and water absorption had been proposed as hybrid green composite materials for boat hull constructionv