Study on influence of fiber length and fiber weight proportion in mechanical behavior of Calotropis gigantea fiber‐epoxy composites

Abstract

AbstractPresent day's global issues focus on solutions to global warming using environment‐friendly biodegradable materials as an alternate to reduce the depletion rate of fossil materials. As the research literature encourages alternate materials for plastics, in composite material formation, this work envisages the use of Calotropis gigantea (CG) fiber as a reinforcement material. CG fiber is chosen in this work, as it is abundantly available in India and does not carry any great vegetation value. Using compression molding, samples of different fiber lengths (25, 50, 75, 100, 125,and 150 mm) with different fiber weight proportions (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50%) were made and subjected to tensile, fractural and impact tests. The composite with the blend of fiber length 100 mm and fiber weight proportion 40% recorded the highest value than the other combinations. Further, results show that, the mechanical properties of CG fiber are comparable with the other natural fiber alternatives experimented and reported earlier in the research literature. Morphology study of the broken surface of the specimens using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) shows the nature of the fiber breakage. The overall results disclose that the CG fiber can be a potential reinforcing material in polymer composites, making it suitable for manufacturing automobile interior, exterior accessories, and domestic appliances.