Fabrication And Testing Of Biodegradable Fiber Composites

Glass fibers are the most useful reinforcement material in composites. The interest in using natural fibers such as different plant fibers and wood fibers as a substitute for glass fibers has increased during last few years. Natural fibers have many advantages compared to glass fibers, for example they have low density, and they are recyclable and biodegradable. Additionally they are renewable raw materials and have relatively high strength and stiffness. The effect of ply orientation on mechanical properties of reinforced natural composites like sisal fiber, kuruthola fiber, and banana fiber, is tested. In which the fibers are heat treated for enhancing the strength by removing moisture. Samples of deferent orientation of sisal fiber, kuruthola fiber, and banana fiber reinforced composites were fabricated. In this work the composite material is prepared from weight ratio of resin to mat is 3:1, for every 1kg of mat 3kg of polyester resin is used and for 100ml of resin 10ml of accelerator is used and ten drops of methyl ethyl ketone peroxide is used as catalyst to improve the speed of the reaction. The natural fiber composites like sisal fiber, banana fiber, and kuruthola fiber composites reach the mechanical properties of glass fiber composites and also in which 900 orientation (unidirectional) good mechanical properties than 450 orientations have. Due to the low density, bio degradability, and high specific properties natural fiber composite have very good future applications in modern industry.