Strength Prediction for Jute Polyester Composite for Transverse Fiber Reinforcement

Abstract

The composites are very useful in present era due to weight saving and economy of construction by tailoring material to structural application. In order to save the crop from extinction and to ensure a reasonable return to the farmers, non-traditional outlets have to be explored for the jute fiber. Jute fiber due to its adequate tensile strength and good specific modulus enjoys the right potential for usage in composites. In the present work the experimentations were conducted for the strength of composite by varying volume fraction of fiber in the range of 12 % to 42 %. The tensile strengths of specimen were measured as per ASTM D 3039-76, and the amount of voids fraction is measured to evaluate actual contributing volume fraction of fiber and volume fraction of matrix. The prediction of strength is proposed by considering efficiency terms f η and m η representing effective contribution of fiber and matrix and an additional efficiencies t1 η and t 2 η representing effectiveness from fiber and matrix for transverse reinforcement case. The results are also compared with FEM results obtained using standard package ANSYS and IDEAS. The results obtained by experiments are observed to be within 0.9 % with developed model and 2.85 % and 3.21 % with ANSYS and IDEAS simulated results. The deviation of proposed model is observed under predictive for experimental data available in literature while the experimental results obtained in present work is also found to be on lower side to that of available predictive models from literature.