Abstract
In recent days biodegradable natural fibers are gaining lot of interest for researchers to work and develop a novel composite material for various diversified applications. The biodegradable natural fibers are worthy replacements for the plastics and other synthetic materials due to their advantages viz. low cost, light weight and good strength. In the present work, an attempt is made to study the effects of 5% NaOH treated sweet lime and lemon particles reinforced at 10%, 20% and 30% volume fraction in epoxy resin. The bio-composites were fabricated using hand-layup technique. The study revealed that the mechanical properties of both Epoxy/Sweet lime and Epoxy/Lemon bio-composites enhanced with the addition of reinforced peel particles. Among the two bio-composites, Epoxy/Lemon bio-composite displayed better results with 30% volume fraction of lemon particles. The later investigation yielded with tensile strength of 48.22 MPa, flexural strength of 79.32 MPa and hardness of 82.6 HRB. Observations from micrographs resulted in fairly good particle distribution and particle-matrix adhesion. The outcomes of experimental works were compared with simulation using ANSYS workbench. The errors observed with FEA tool and experimental were in the range of 2 to 15%.
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