Effect of micro‐sized marble dust on mechanical and thermo‐mechanical properties of needle‐punched nonwoven jute fiber reinforced polymer composites

Abstract

AbstractThis work explores effectiveness of marble dust as a filler in needle‐punch nonwoven jute fiber reinforced polymer composites, prepared through vacuum‐assisted resin transfer molding process. Four different particulate filled composites are fabricated by varying the filler percentage from 0 to 24 wt% at an interval of 8 wt% marble dust under the controlled environment. The mechanical characterizations such as flexural strength, interlaminar shear strength, compressive strength, and impact strength enhanced with the increase in filler wt% in the composite. The improvement rate is observed from 14% to 33% compared to the unfilled composite. However, for tensile strength is concerned with the increase in filler content in the composites, the strength shows declined in order irrespective of filler content. This study also focuses on high‐temperature applications, for that dynamic mechanical analysis is performed in a three‐point bending mode with 1 Hz frequency as a function of temperature. Similarly, in case of fracture toughness of the proposed composites, the fracture toughness increases approximately from ≈22%, 27% and 59% respectively over unfilled composite with the change in filler percentage. Simultaneously, numerical simulation for fracture toughness is also performed and compared with experimental results. The deviation is found in the range from 0% to 4% with R2 value of 0.984. Based upon the outcome of present results, this research work can be subsequently extended for the low‐grade housing applications in one end and at the same time, optimal waste utilization can also be possible to reduce the environmental waste.