Kenaf Fiber Composite in Automotive Industry: An Overview

Recently, natural fibers become attractive to automotive industry as an alternative reinforcement for glass fiber reinforced thermoplastics. Additionally, natural fiber components in the automotive industry can provide numerous advantages compared to synthetic conventional such as reduction of weight and cost, recyclability, renewability and in addition to eco-efficiency. Thus, the use of natural fibers in the automotive industry has shown increasingly stringent environmental criteria. Furthermore, amongst grouped bast fibers such as flax, hemp, jute, ramie, and kenaf; kenaf fiber is seen as a potential natural fiber with robust mechanical properties. Kenaf fiber had been explored to enhance desired mechanical properties as automotive structural components. As usual, natural fibres have some issues and disadvantages when used as reinforcements for polymeric composites. Therefore, some modification performed on fibers such as chemical treatment was carried out. In addition, the use of a coupling agent and a plasticizer can also increase fiber-matrix adhesive bonding.