Effect of Filler on Mechanical Properties of Natural Fiber Reinforced Composites

Abstract

Natural fiber reinforced composites are progressively used in a variety of commercial applications such as automotive, aerospace and marine. Many technologies demand materials with unusual mixture of properties such as high strength to weight ratio, high stiffness, high corrosion resistance, high fatigue strength, high dimensional stability, etc. These can’t be met by conventional metal alloys, due to comparable properties the scope of for natural fibers became enormous. More research work is done on natural fiber composites. But, woven jute fiber and epoxy resin matrix is not used for research studies. Literature review shows that composite made of combination of these constituents is not studied in order to know its properties. Present study focus on the effect of nano silicon dioxide as filler on tensile, flexural and fatigue properties of jute reinforced epoxy composites with three different combinations of filler material and two different orientations. The three different compositions were 0 % nano silicon dioxide, 5 % nano silicon dioxide, 10 % nano silicon dioxide. The two different orientations were 0/90 and +45/–45 orientation. Tensile and flexural strength of all the compositions of the composites reveled that ultimate tensile strength, peak load and young’s modulus were more in case of 5 % silica filled jute epoxy composite compared to other two compositions. Similarly fatigue test to determine the number of cycles up to 50 % stiffness degradation of laminates reveals that specimens loaded with 5 % nano silicon dioxide shows higher number of cycles. The study concludes that the combination of filler and fiber composite material is competitive to synthetic composites.