Properties of Abaca/Epoxy Composites Modified by Activated Carbon Particles for Orthosis Application

Abstract

Abaca fiber (AF), epoxy (EP), and activated carbon particle (ACPs) incorporated composites have been previously studied to improve their mechanical properties. A study on integrating AF and ACPs to reinforce EP has not been done for comparison. The current study investigates the mechanical (tensile and flexural) and physical (water absorption) properties of AF/EP composites with 20 vol% AF modified by ACPs at 1% to 10% levels, and ACPs/EP composite with 20 vol% ACPs. Optical and scanning electron microscopy examined ACPs and the composite’s fracture surface morphologies. X-ray diffraction was used to identify the ACPs’ phase. The results showed that adding 5 vol% ACPs to AF/EP led to an optimum tensile strength of 42.50 MPa, which was slightly lower than AF/EP (43.00 MPa), and an optimum flexural strength of 62.10 MPa, which was slightly higher than AF/EP (60.50 MPa). Besides, adding 20% ACPs to EP resulted in a tensile strength of 31.93 MPa, higher than the previous result of ACPs/EP (26.34 MPa), also by adding 20% ACPs. Introducing ACPs to AF/EP could reduce water absorption in the composite by 6.52%. The measured flexural modulus of AF/EP added with 5 vol% ACPs was selected as the best material used in the simulation of ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) by Autodesk Inventor integrated with ANSYS Workbench 2019 R1. Applying a load of 27 N resulted in a von Misses stress of 54.018 MPa and a deformation of 44.675 mm.