Mechanical and ThermoMechanical Properties of Woven Sisal Fiber Reinforced Biodegradable Composites

Abstract

Natural fiber reinforced composites have extensively used in non-structural components, mainly in the automotive industry. The use of short and random fibers in those composites leads to discontinuity. These create a non-uniform stress distribution in the matrix during loading. Due to this non-uniform stress distribution, the composite fails early with a lower strain rate. This limitation can be overcome by using fabric reinforced composites. However, most of the textile properties are influences the performance of the composites. This study mainly focuses on mechanical (tensile and flexural) and dynamic mechanical characterization of fabric reinforced polymer composites. The thesis work is discussed in three phases: matrix, reinforcement, and composites. In the first phase, Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) is cross-linked with Glutaraldehyde (GA) for various volume fractions using a conventional vacuum-assisted pressure compression method. The mechanical and dynamic mechanical properties are carried out to optimize the volume fraction and is found at 20%. In the second phase, three types of woven fabrics prepared to study the effect of textile properties and woven patterns. Two plain woven fabrics (Plain 1 and Plain 2) are prepared with different grams per square meter (GSM). Also, another type of weft rib woven is prepared by keeping the same GSM as Plain 2 to analyze the effect of the woven pattern. The mechanical properties of these three fabrics are investigated and found that weft direction of weft rib fabric exhibits better mechanical properties. In the third phase, the composites are prepared using Plain 1, Plain 2 and Weft rib fabrics as reinforcement in 20% GA cross-linked PVA as matrix material and mechanical and dynamic mechanical properties are analyzed. The mechanical and dynamic mechanical properties of Plain 1 based composites exhibit better at room temperature, while based composites exhibit better dynamic mechanical properties at a higher temperature. It is shown that woven pattern of the fabric influenced significantly on composite properties. Similarly, weft direction of the composite exhibits better mechanical properties than warp direction, and it indicates loading direction also influenced.