Project on Silk Reinforced Fiber Composites

Abstract

Now a days, the fiber reinforced composites have dramatically come into use. These composites have gained so much recognition because of their processing advantages and good technical properties like strength, stiffness, elastic modulus, creep rate, damping. Furthermore, these properties showed considerable improvement with increasing silk fabric content. The waste silk collected from the factory outlets were used to fabricate silk reinforced epoxy composites and various samples were developed with varying silk content. Silk fiber because of the presence of many functional groups like –NH2-, COOH, NHCO, CH2OH on its surface is polar in nature. This fiber has got a non-cellular structure which is expected to produce excellent adhesion between silk fiber and polymer in their composite. Also fiber reinforcement enhances the strength of the composites which can be used in various mechanical goods. This project aims to study the properties of the waste silk reinforced epoxy composites with varying silk contents.