INVESTIGATION ON THE MECHANICALBEHAVIOUR OF THE GLASS/ BANANAFIBERS REINFORCED EPOXY COMPOSITE

The composites are one of the advanced engineering materials which are commonly used in this decade in day today life. The natural fibers are us ed for the reinforcement in order to get higher strength,reduced density,lower weight for several applications. The hybrid composite is obtained by using two or more materials with varying properties . Hybridization is a process of incorporating synthetic fiber with the natural fiber to get the b etter strength,stiffness,high strength to weight ratio and improvements in the mechanical properties. In t his work,an attempt is made to hybridize using Glass (synthetic) fiber as well as Banana (natural) fiber with Epoxy resin as the matrix material,suc h that to reduce the overall use of the synthetic rei nforcement and to enhance the mechanical properties. The composites are fabricated using the Hand Lay-Up method for the different weight percentages of the reinforcements. The mechanical p roperties are evaluated by conducting tests such as Tensile test,Flexural test,Impact test,Hardne ss test,Interlaminar shear strength test,Water absorption test according to the ASTM standards. Th e experimental results showed that the HFREC showed better mechanical properties than the BFREC and closer to the values of the GFREC.

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