Synthesis and Characterization of Hardwickia Binata Fiber with Epoxy

Abstract

For hundreds of year’s composite materials have been playing very crucial role in the field of materials. The applications of composites expanded widely to the aircraft, automotive, sporting goods, and biomedical industries. Today natural fibers like ramie, jowar, sisal, flax, hemp, jute, bamboo, banana, etc. are widely used than the synthetic fibers like glass, carbon, ceramic fibers, etc., because these natural fibres offer several advantages over synthetic fibres. In this project a new natural fiber is introduced to develop Fiber Reinforced Composite. Composite material is fabricated by hand lay-up method by using epoxy resin as the matrix and Hardwickia binata fiber as the reinforcing agent. Mechanical properties such as tensile and impact properties of Hardwickia binata fiber reinforced composites are investigated by varying fiber length and weight fraction. The composite plate is fabricated with different weight fractions of hardwickia binata fiber (5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 wt. %) and different lengths of the fiber (2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 mm). This paper concludes that, the tensile properties increases up to 20 wt. % fiber load with increasing fiber length while the impact properties increases with increasing fiber length and fiber load.