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Due to the increasing awareness on environmental impact and the needs towards sustainability, weight reduction of the vehicles is one of the most promising solutions to improve fuel efficiency towards achieving the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Fibre metal laminate is one of the lightweight material that inherits advantages of metal and fibre reinforced composite. Therefore, the drive of this study is to determine the effect of water absorption on tensile properties, thickness swelling and forming analysis of the natural fibre metal laminate. Fabrication of natural fibre metal laminate consists of two layers of kenaf woven fabric in polypropylene matrix and aluminium 5052-O as the skin. The results show that the natural fibre metal laminate absorbs 0.67% water and has 0.91% thickness swelling. The water content has minimal effect on the tensile properties of the natural fibre metal laminate. While for the forming analysis, the natural fibre metal laminate has higher formability compared to an aluminium sheet and has a higher potential to be formed into complex shape.

Fibre metal laminates (FMLs) are the contemporary sandwich materials that have been employed in the aerospace industries. The commercially available synthetic fibre based FMLs have shown excellent fatigue, impact and specific properties over those of metallic alloys. In order to explore the potential of environmental friendly cellulosic based materials, this research work aims to characterise the mechanical properties of novel woven pineapple leaf fibre reinforced metal laminates which were prepared through the hot compression moulding technique. For the comparison purpose, the mechanical properties of woven pineapple leaf fabrics and pineapple leaf fibre reinforced composite laminates were determined as well. It was concluded that the pineapple leaf fibre reinforced metal laminates evidenced salient mechanical and specific properties over pineapple leaf fabrics and composites. The specific tensile strength of metal laminates was 230.87% and 62.21% higher than those of the pineapple leaf fabrics and composite laminates whereas the specific flexural strength of metal laminates was 174.91% higher than composite laminates. Besides that, metal laminates also showed an impact strength of 91.49 kJ/m2 which was 143.13% greater than that of the composite laminates. The results indeed showed that the pineapple based FMLs could be considered as the promising and sustainable sandwich materials in future structural applications.