Abstract
Natural fibers used as reinforcements or fillers for materials development greatly affect properties and performance of end-use applications. As a consequence of conditioning processes such as grinding and sieving, average fiber length varies significantly. It is thus necessary to estimate the length as statistical data distribution rather than a single mean value. This approach implies length measurement of a significant number of fibers; however, a very high number of data points requires not only long-time frames but also significative amount of work. To address these issues, this article details a facile methodology to measure the length of a large number of natural fibers of oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) together with a statistical analysis to verify the correspondence between theoretical distributions and experimental data. Moreover, further information related to spectrophotometric, physico-chemical, mechanical, thermal, and morphological characteristics of OPEFB fibers coming from oil palm cultivation in Ecuador are presented. The data will contribute to comprehensively and rigorously describe the overall effects of natural fiber lengths on material properties.