Author : Satish Pujari, A. Ramakrishna and M. Suresh Kumar

Last few decades have seen composite materials being used predominantly in various applications.Many types of natural fibers have been investigated for their use in plastics including Flax, hemp, jute, straw, wood fiber, rice husks, wheat, barley, oats, cane (sugar and bamboo), grass reeds, kenaf, ramie, oil palm empty fruit bunch, sisal, coir, water pennywort, kapok, paper-mulberry, raphia, banana fiber, pineapple leaf fiber and papyrus. Their volume and number of applications have grown steadily. Natural fibers offer both cost savings and reduction in density when compared to glass fibers. Natural fibers are an alternative resource to synthetic fibers,as reinforcement for polymeric materials for the manufacture is cheap, renewable and environment friendly. This paper discusses in detail about the uses & applications of jute and banana fiber composites.

Keywords: Jute fibers, Banana fibers, Properties of fibers, Application of fibers, uses of fibers

Article published in International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Sciences 2014, Special Issue-2 (Feb 2014)