Effect of Luffa Sponge Fibre Mats Embedded in the Plaster Matrix

Abstract

The present experimental research work aims to elaborate a new composite material (CM) composed of plasters reinforced with mats of long unidirectional luffa sponge fibres, treated chemically by 1% NaOH solution during 90 min at a temperature of 50°C, in orderto improve its thermomechanical and physical properties. The influence of fibre mat and fibre napping numbers of luffa sponge on density, porosity, flexural strength, thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, thermal effusivity and specific heat capacity properties was investigatedto lower building energy consumption. As far as our case is concerned, we processed a composite using single, double and triple-layer luffa sponge fibre mats. In our study, we are basically confined our experiments to three-layer mats. The experimental results revealed that the networking structure of fibres increases the flexural strength and decreases the thermal conductivity for a two-layer fibre wire mesh imbedded in the plaster matrix as compared with the neat plaster. However, there is a decrease in strength for a triple-layer composite, which referred to poor wetting of the fiber with the matrix material.