Experimental study of mechanical and thermal properties of Bhimal fiber reinforced epoxy bio-composite

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Date
2017-07
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
Bio-composites are putting forth a concentrated effort in almost every engineering field due to their cost viability and biodegradable nature. In a huge variety of natural fibers, bhimal fiber is a very promising fiber that still needs to be explored as an engineering material, because it has very rarely been used by researchers in their research work. Bhimal fiber is a cellulosic fiber extracted from the stems of bhimal tree. It has a great tensile strength and flexibility. In present work bhimal fiber reinforced epoxy bio-composite was successfully prepared by hand lay-up casting technique in order to examine its mechanical and thermal properties for varying content of bhimal fiber ( i.e. 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 weight % ). Before the preparation of composite, the surface of bhimal fiber was treated with potassium hydroxide to improve its adhesion properties. From the experiments it was observed that while increasing the fiber content up to 5 wt%, the tensile, flexural and compressive strength continuously increased then started decreasing. Similarly hardness and impact strength were also observed to be increasing up to a peak value at 4 wt% of bhimal fiber. All these results were supported by the SEM, TGA and DTA results. From the observations, it has been concluded that the bhimal fibers are lighter in weight than all existing fibers and strength to weight ratio of the bhimal fiber reinforced epoxy bio-composite is quite higher than the other conventionally used natural fiber based composites. Hence these can be used as reinforcement to produce much lighter weight bio-composites.
Description
Keywords
null
Citation
Collections