Abstract

The conventional overhead transmission line insulators are usually made of glass and ceramics, but the materials are heavy and bulky. Therefore, kenaf fibre was chosen as partial replacement material to be reinforced with Glass/epoxy composite to reduce the weight and bulkiness of the composite structures. This study used Epoxy as matrix and kenaf/glass fibres to reinforce fillers to fabricate the composites in various stacking sequences. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was carried out using LS-DYNA software to investigate the tensile properties of the hybrid composite. The results showed a significant improvement in tensile values of the modelled composite exhibited by the kenaf/glass fibre. The tensile strength of the hybrid composites was comparable with the Glass/Kenaf/Epoxy hybrid composites’ experimental results. About 200% tensile strength improvement can be observed for both experimental and numerical for G/K/G/E sample than pure epoxy samples, thus making the new composite a potential substitute for insulator applications.

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