Properties and Performance Analysis of Woven Roving Composite Laminates for Automotive Panel Board Applications

Abstract

Now-a-days natural Fibers are employed in various engineering applications because of their high tensile strength, low thermal expansion, high strength to weight ratio and good corrosion resistance. In this paper, woven roving composite laminates are prepared to produce automotive panel boards. Even though, various methods are available for preparing composites like Pultrusion method, filament winding method and hand layup method, hand lay method is used in this paper. The bundles of woven roving are alkalized at concentration between 1.2 and 6% of NaoH. Then, the treated fibres with increased strength are used as reinforcement with Epoxy LY556 resin with HY951 hardener under room temperature. The tensile analysis is conducted for the specimens like plain specimen, specimen with circular central hole and specimen with rectangular central hole. The results show that plain specimen is having more strength followed by circular hole and then rectangular hole specimens. It suggested that the case industry can make near optimal circular hole for its components by replacing rectangular hole.