EFFECTS OF REINFORCEMENT RATIO ON PHYSICAL AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF CORN SILK REINFORCED EPOXY COMPOSITE

Abstract

Corn silk known as the waste product that can contribute to bad pollution neither air nor land. Therefore, corn silk was introduced as a nature fibre reinforcement in composite which can contribute to the positive environmental issues while developing new composite materials. 4 samples were fabricated by different composition at 0% to 6vol% employing the hand lay-up technique by mixing the natural fibre with epoxy and hardener at fixed ratio. The objective of this experiment was to fabricate the sample of composite materials with different reinforcement ratio of corn silk with epoxy and study their effects on physical and mechanical properties. Sample size prepared following ASTM DT 3039 standard (250mm X 25mm X 3mm) for tensile test. Tests conducted shows that the hardness were increase while the density value were fluctuating by increasing corn silk reinforcement ratio. The highest hardness and density values reflect on 6 vol% with 20.5 HV and 2 vol% with 1.22 g/cm3 respectively. The result revealed the highest strength achieved by 0% of fibre with 22.6458 MPa and lowest at 6% of fibre with 13.2146 MPa. Moreover, the highest strain achieved by 0% of fibre with 1.085% and lowest at 6% of fibre with 0.6894% the pattern of result shows the value of strength and strain is increasing by decreasing the percentage of the fibre. The highest value of young's modulus achieved by 0% of fibre with 21.9742 MPa and for the lowest value of young's modulus at 6% of fibre with 18.8985 MPa.