Fabrication and characterization of Basalt/ATH/Epoxy hybrid composites

Abstract

Nowadays, lightweight materials used in automobiles are composite materials reinforced with different fibres. They have better qualities, including less weight, more impact strength and resilience. In this work, hand-fabricated Epoxy hybrid composite laminates were processed using Epoxy resin as matrix and basalt fiber with a constant weight % of 1 along with aluminium hydroxide (ATH) powder of 1%, 2% and 3% (varying %) by compression molding method. To check the quality of these three hybrid composites, impact, tensile and flexural tests were conducted. From the characterization results, it was found that the weight fraction of aluminium hydroxide (ATH) powder increases (1%, 2% and 3%), and the flexural and tensile strength increases initially up to 2% of ATH reinforcement and then decreases. But, the impact strength is increased continuously with an increase in reinforcements. A scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to examine the microstructure of the broken surface of the composites after the tensile test to understand the failure mechanisms of processed composites.