Investigation of Thermo Mechanical Properties of NaturalWaste Based Hybrid Composites

Abstract

As we all know that India is known for its agricultural products rather than its industrial goods. Farmers produce crops and they pet several animals. The waste produced from their animals and crops are utilized by them to some extent but due to unawareness a lot of material goes on waste. Some of these wastes are Bagasse fiber and chicken feather. Also these alternate materials are environment Friendly as well as biodegradable. In poultry industry chicken feather is waste material but it posses high toughness and insulation and is also used as good reinforcing material in polymer matrix composite due to low density, low cost and high aspect. Bagasse having high tensile strength contains about 40% cellulose, 30% hemicelluloses, and 15% lignin which are modified by creating quionones in lignin portion of the fiber and reacting with the furfural alcohol to increase their adhesiveness. Short Natural fibers like chicken and long fibers like bagasse were used in hybrid combination and the fiber weight fraction of 5%, 55% and 40% were used for the fabrication of the composite in epoxy Resin. This composite is manufactured using hand layup process. Mechanical properties of composite are determined through hardness and impact tests. Water absorption tests were conducted by immersing specimen in a water bath at room temperature for different time durations.