Banana/ coir biofibers and carbon/innegra fabrics and BN/MWCNT nanoparticles reinforced UV resistant polyester hybrid composites

Abstract

Plant cellulose fibers are a biodegradable and acceptable alternative for fabricating balanced-strength polymer laminate components due to their higher specific strength, eco-friendliness, and renewable nature. The target of the present investigation is to manufacture banana-boron nitride-carbon fabric and coir-multi walled carbon nanotubes-Innegra fabric hybrid polyester laminates by varying different chemical treatments and determine the physical (density, water absorption, and contact angle), mechanical (tensile, flexural, interlaminar shear, impact strength, and shore D hardness) and thermal (onset, endset, glass transition temperature, and carbon residue) characteristics of fabricated laminates. The addition of chemically treated/ untreated banana/ coir fillers in the polyester matrix was affirmed morphologically and structurally from Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) spectra and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results examined the higher thermal stability of the chemically treated banana/ coir fiber reinforced polyester hybrid laminates around 400 °C. The artificial neural network modeling was performed to select the best composite material among the fabricated laminates. The determination coefficient values were lower than 0.98 for testing, validation, and training for both laminates. The model outcomes exhibited lower root mean squared error, explaining that using the model of an exact threshold was predicted for the artificial neural network forecasting. The one way-Analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique was applied to study the significance of the difference between the chemically treated/ untreated banana and coir fillers on physical, mechanical, and thermal characteristics.