ELEPHANT GRASS-GLASS FIBER HYBRID COMPOSITES

Abstract

An attempt has been made in the present work to explore and the possible use of variety of cultivated/wild grown fiber in the development of elephant grass–glass fiber reinforced polyester hybrid composites. The fiber is extracted from retting and manual method, and the test specimens are prepared as per “ASTM”standards. Five different contents are incorporated in the specimen, with each fiber content five identical specimens are prepared. Elephant grass–glass fiber reinforced polyester hybrid composites, are prepared by incorporating up to (40/0%,30/10%,20/20%,10/30%,0/40%) by mass.. It is observed clearly (40/0%) only mass of fiber compare with (30/10%) of hybrid composites. There is tensile strength, tensile modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus; impact strength is 65.415Mpa,68.635Mpa,123035Mpa,1536.3Mpa, 257.305j/m, 2282.85 j/m respectively. There is increases the percentage of natural fiber to the glass fiber content increase the tensile strength ,tensile modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, impact strength, respectively. The effect of NaOH treatment of the Elephant grass fibers on these properties was also studied. It was observed that hybrid composite increase with glass fiber content. These properties were found to be higher when NaOH Elephant grass fiber were used in the hybrid composites. The elimination of amorphous hemi-cellulose with NaOH leading to higher crystallinity of the Elephant grass fibers with NaOH treatment may be responsible for these observations.