| Summary: | Coconut palm is mainly cultivated in coastal areas of tropical countries. The husk is abundantly available in many places as cheap residue from coconut processing, which is considered to produce coconut fiber. This coconut fiber is explored for new usage and adopted for various engineering applications. It is expected that this fiber would act as an excellent raw material for panel product such as fiberboard with value added. This paper investigates the impact response of fiberboard made from coconut fiber. Three types of natural binder were used which included corn starch (CS), tapioca starch (TS), and rice flour (RF). The coconut fiberboards (CFB) were coded as CFBCS, CFBTS, and CFBRF based natural binder which were prepared using hot compression machine with the temperature of 150 °C for 1 h holding time. The impact behavior of coconut fiberboard was investigated using a drop-weight impact tower at three different energy levels of 5, 10, and 15 J as according to ASTM D7136. The results showed that CFBCS has higher energy absorbed and impact strength followed by CFBTS and CFBRF. For instant, at 15 J of impact energy, the CFBCS possesses 1.51 J energy absorbed and 11.54 kJ/m2 impact strength, which is 128.80% and 132.66% higher compared to CFBRF, respectively. Among all the natural binders, the corn starch is the best binder due to hydroxyl groups contain in corn starch, which form strong bonds with the coconut fibers. Thus, eventually enhanced impact properties of CFBRF. The optical analysis showed that the coconut fiberboard cracked and chirped during the impact test. Therefore, the formulation of coconut fiber with corn starch could be used for fiberboard in furniture industries. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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