Evaluation and Analysis of Elastic Properties for Banana and Graphite Fiber Blended with Graphene Nano-Platelets Based Hybrid Green Composite Using Micromechanical and Semi-Empirical Models

Abstract

This paper evaluates the isotropic elastic properties of a hybrid composite made of banana fiber and unidirectional graphite fiber reinforced with graphene nano-platelets (GNPs) embedded in polyimide resin. Three different micromechanical models, namely Mori-Tanaka (M-T), Paul’s model (PM), and Maxwell’s model (MM), and one semi-empirical model, namely Modified Halpin-Tsai (Mod. H-T), are used for evaluating and analyzing the elastic properties for the proposed novel hybrid composite. The impact of the size of GNPs on the proposed composite material in the fully dispersed and agglomerated state, impact of different volume fractions of banana and graphite fiber on the axial Young’s modulus (AYm), transverse Young’s modulus (TYm), axial Poisson’s ratio (APr) and axial shear moduli (ASm) of the proposed composite material are analytically evaluated and analyzed. The analysis shows that with the addition of graphite fiber in the GNP-reinforced banana fiber, the elastic features of the proposed composites are improved. It is also observed that the agglomeration of GNPs substantially reduces the hardening effect of GNPs in the proposed composite material. A low volume fraction of graphene (till 1.5 volume%) is observed to strengthen the mechanical features of the proposed composite material. Additionally, the hybridization effect for the composite is evaluated to examine the tensile failure strain features of banana and graphite fiber in the proposed hybrid composite material.