Fabrication and Experimental Analysis of Treated Snake Grass Fiber Reinforced with Polyester Composite

The selection of fiber is predominant for natural fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials, which should have easy extraction and good bonding with considerable strength. In this paper, some chemical treatments were done on the fiber material to increase interfacial bonding between the snake grass fiber (Sansevieria ehrenbergii) and polyester matrix, such as alkali treatment (NaOH), potassium permanganate treatment, sodium carbonate treatment, hydrogen peroxide treatment, and calcium carbonate treatment. The chopped snake grass fiber-reinforced polymer composite material was prepared by keeping 25 wt.% of fiber and 30 mm fiber length reinforced with an unsaturated polyester resin that was cured with the help of the catalyst methyl ethyl ketone peroxide (MEPK). Cobalt naphthenate was used as an accelerator. Tribological properties were discussed for the highly potential sample with the help of a pin-on-disc wear tester, and the results were analysed by the Taguchi L9 orthogonal array. This paper exhibited the best mechanical and tribological properties among those chemical-treated fibers used in fiber-reinforced composite materials and untreated fibers used in fiber-reinforced composite materials. CaCO3 treatment provided higher tensile strength (45 MPa), impact strength (3.35 J), and hardness (27 BHN). Finally, the mechanical and tribological characterization of the samples was done with the aid of SEM (scanning electron microscope).

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Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites: Manufacturing, Properties, and Applications

Polymers ◽

10.3390/polym11101667 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (10) ◽

pp. 1667 ◽

Cited By ~ 77

Author(s):

Dipen Rajak ◽

Durgesh Pagar ◽

Pradeep Menezes ◽

Emanoil Linul

Keyword(s):

Composite Materials ◽

High Strength ◽

Fiber Reinforced Polymer ◽

Fiber Reinforced ◽

Diverse Range ◽

Promising Alternative ◽

Fiber Reinforced Composite ◽

Reinforced Composite ◽

Reinforced Polymer ◽

Manufacturing Techniques

Composites have been found to be the most promising and discerning material available in this century. Presently, composites reinforced with fibers of synthetic or natural materials are gaining more importance as demands for lightweight materials with high strength for specific applications are growing in the market. Fiber-reinforced polymer composite offers not only high strength to weight ratio, but also reveals exceptional properties such as high durability; stiffness; damping property; flexural strength; and resistance to corrosion, wear, impact, and fire. These wide ranges of diverse features have led composite materials to find applications in mechanical, construction, aerospace, automobile, biomedical, marine, and many other manufacturing industries. Performance of composite materials predominantly depends on their constituent elements and manufacturing techniques, therefore, functional properties of various fibers available worldwide, their classifications, and the manufacturing techniques used to fabricate the composite materials need to be studied in order to figure out the optimized characteristic of the material for the desired application. An overview of a diverse range of fibers, their properties, functionality, classification, and various fiber composite manufacturing techniques is presented to discover the optimized fiber-reinforced composite material for significant applications. Their exceptional performance in the numerous fields of applications have made fiber-reinforced composite materials a promising alternative over solitary metals or alloys.

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