Mechanical, thermal and morphological properties of raw cordia dichotoma fiber reinforced epoxy composites

Abstract

In the present investigation, cordia-dichotma fiber was used as reinforcement for the development of natural fiber composite. The novelty of this research work lies in the investigations of basic mechanical, thermal and structural properties of raw cordia-dichotoma fiber reinforced epoxy composites. Cordia-dichotoma fiber reinforced composites were prepared using the hand-layup technique with different weight proportions (10, 15, 20, and 25) of fiber into the epoxy resin. The composites were tested to evaluate the mechanical properties using Universal Testing Machine (UTM). From the results, it is clear that the mechanical properties increase up to 20% weight of the fibers and later decreases due to the improper bonding between the fibers and the epoxy. Further, for an inclusive materialcharacterization, the presence of chemical compounds and functional groups were identified by FTIR spectroscopy. SEM analysis was used to observe bonding between fibers and epoxy, and also the thermal stability of the composite specimen was observed through Thermo-gravimetric Analysis (TGA). The performance of these composites leads to potential use of outdoor, infrastructure and structural applications with low cost and practical processing methods.

Keywords

• Natural fibers
• Epoxy
• SEM
• FT-IR
• TGA