Fabrication and Depiction of Reinforced Human Hair Polymer Matrix Composites

Abstract

Abstract: In recent years, the use of fiber reinforced polymer composites in variety of applications play a major role due to their attractive properties such as light weight, fatigue resistance, easy moldability, high specific strength and modulus. Earlier researchers in past studies have shown that synthetic fiber reinforced polymer composites obtained a better mechanical properties but the applications are restricted to less because of high procurement and manufacturing cost and more weight. To overcome these, nowadays light weight natural fiber reinforced polymer composites are very widely used in the field of automobile, Aerospace, Marine, and Furniture’s applications because of their recyclability, easy availability and low cost of materials and production. Human hair is a versatile material identified with a significant potential in the use of reinforcement in composites due to its excellent material properties. The present work concentrates on the fabrication and study of various physical, mechanical and thermal properties of natural fiber reinforced thermo-set polymer matrix composites. The fabrication was done for eight different types of new set of natural fiber polymer composites which consist of human hair as reinforcement, Epoxy and Vinylesteras the resin with four different set of fiber volume fractions (70:30, 75:25, 80:20, 85:15 ratio of matrix and fiber respectively) using hand layup technique. Then the samples were prepared according to ASTM standard for testing mechanical properties such as Impact Energy, Rockwell Hardness and physical properties such as Density and water absorption. Theoretical density of composites was determined for validating actual density of fabricated composites. Rockwell Hardness was measured on both dry and water absorbed composite samples. Internal structure between fiber and matrix was analyzed by using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Keywords: Composites, Fiber reinforced polymer, Fabrication process, Hard Facing Electrodes, Hand Layup Technique, Scanning Electron Microscope