Okwuchi Onyekwere - Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Federal University Wukari, Taraba State, Nigeria.
Mobolaji Oladeinde - Department of Production Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Benin, Nigeria.
Raphael Edokpia - Department of Production Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Benin, Nigeria.

In composite production, hydrophilic nature of plant fibres results in poor interfacial adhesion between polar-hydrophilic fibre and non-polar-hydrophobic matrix and dimensional instability of the resulting product. Therefore, there is need to reduce the percentage of water absorption of natural fibres before incorporating them in composite. Bamboo fibre polyester composites were subjected to three modification treatments which are mercerization, acetylation and mercerized-acetylation at fibre content levels of ۱۰, ۲۰ ۳۰, ۴۰ and ۵۰ wt % in order to reduce the moisture absorption of the composites. Taguchi method was used to optimize the parameter settings for reduced moisture absorption. The diffusion coefficient, absorption coefficient and permeability coefficient of the composites for each fibre treatment was used to study the absorption kinetics. Mercerized-acetylated fibre composites show the best moisture absorption performance among all the considered treatments. The application of optimization techniques and statistical analysis was used to improve the processes of bamboo fibre polyester composite production in order to achieve improved moisture degradation behavior of the composite and promote the expansion of natural fibres application in engineering.

Reduced moisture absorption, Natural fibre, Surface modification, Composite