Tensile Properties of Natural Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composite Foams: A Systematic Review

Biodegradable foam packaging was chosen as an alternative food packaging material due to non-toxic and produced from renewable sources. Researchers has turned to incorporate natural fibre to enhance the mechanical properties of polymer composite foam. In this study, the objective is to identify the studies which investigated on the tensile properties of natural fiber incorporated polymer composite foam and analyzed the effect of natural fibre content and size on tensile properties. Further correlation between the natural fibre content and size on tensile properties of composite polymer foam was conducted. The studies on the natural fibre incorporated polymer composite was identify via PRISMA method. The effect of natural fibre content and natural fibre size on tensile properties of polymer composite foam were analyzed in terms of qualitative analysis via systematic review. This study employs systematic review method on the existing literature. This study has utilized supplementary databases such as SAGE Journals, ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis, Emerald Insight, ERIC ProQuest, SpringerLink and IEEE Xplore to cater all the possible relevant literature for a comprehensive review. The systematic review method comprised of the steps that explain on the review process in the sequence of the (identification, screening, eligibility), data analysis and data abstraction. From the article used in this systematic review, most of the result shown the increased tensile properties on natural fibre reinforced polymer composite foams. The study by Texteira et al. (2014) shows that the softwood fibre with 33% of PLA loading has the highest elongation at break, and highest natural fibre size (2470 µm). While the study by Long et al. (2019) has the highest tensile strength with 30% of ABF fibre content. The composition of 20 wt% BF with 80 wt% PLA composites were concluded to have the optimum tensile properties