Physicomechanical and abrasive wear properties of hemp/Kevlar/carbon reinforced hybrid epoxy composites

Abstract

The present study investigates the physical, mechanical, and wear properties of the effect of reinforcement of KMnO4-treated hemp fiber (3, 6 and 9 wt%) to epoxy, Kevlar-5 wt%/epoxy and carbon-5 wt%/epoxy composites. The results demonstrated that the carbon-hemp reinforced epoxy composite delivered the best tensile (83.33 MPa at 6 wt% hemp), impact properties (12 Joule at 6 wt% hemp) and hardness (49.4 Hv at 9 wt% hemp) among all composites. The hemp hybridization to Kevlar and carbon fiber based epoxy composites resulted in the significant enhancement of the tensile, elongation, impact, hardness and abrasion wear resistance properties. The Kevlar-hemp fiber based epoxy composites emerged to deliver better elongation and abrasion wear resistance properties than the carbon-hemp reinforced epoxy composites at the same weight percent loading with best elongation properties achieved at 6 wt% hemp loading with Kevlar. The overall ranking of the polymer composite was optimized by using a multi-criteria TOPSIS technique. The TOPSIS optimization demonstrated that the epoxy composite reinforced with 6 wt% of hemp fiber with 5 wt% carbon fiber delivered the best overall physical, mechanical and abrasive wear performance.