Enhancement of mechanical properties of carbon and flax fibre hybrid composites for engineering applications

Abstract

Rapid growth of the hybridization technique for the fabrication of composite materials of natural fibres along-with synthetic fibres are new trends of the market for various application purposes like aerospace, automotive sector, military applications, structural uses. These fabricated composites have significant characteristics like being environmentally friendly and also acts as sustainable materials. Earlier carbon & glass fibres were mostly used in composites. The present study focuses on application of flax fibres in the composite materials for enhancement of mechanical properties. Six types of specimens were fabricated and experimentation is performed for the tension, compression, and fatigue testing at various loading conditions of plain flax and the hybrid composites of carbon reinforced fibres. It has been observed from the results obtained that lifetime of fatigue mechanism increases for the hybrid fibres with an increment in the contents of carbon in comparison to contents of flax fibres. It has also been noticed that mechanical behavior improves in greater extent due to the high strain value of flax composites compared to carbon fibre composites. When cyclic loading is allowed for the samples of specimen fabricated then interestingly the hybrids of Carbon/Flax/Carbon shows similar trending fatigue stiffness characteristics to hybrid of Carbon/Flax/Carbon/Flax sequence. Highest fatigue resistive behavior is noted for the carbon composite and highest strain value for the flax composites is seen. The fracture surfaces were examined by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) through the failure mechanism in tensile test. Hybrid composite shows more tensile strength than the pure flax fibre composite. From the experimentation, it can be concluded that for the application purpose in various composite industries, the plain flax fibre can partially replace the highly cost synthetic fibres of carbon. This replacement will also be fruitful for the eco-friendly production of hybrid composite materials.