Study on Mechanical Behavior of Coir Fiber Reinforced Polymer Matrix Composites

Abstract

Fiber-reinforced polymer composites have played a dominant role for a long time in a variety of applications for their high specific strength and modulus. The fiber which serves as a reinforcement in reinforced plastics may be synthetic or natural. Past studies show that only synthetic fibers such as glass, carbon etc., have been used in fiber-reinforced plastics. Although glass and other synthetic fiber-reinforced plastics possess high specific strength, their fields of application are very limited because of their inherent higher cost of production. In this connection, an investigation has been carried out to make use of coir, a natural fiber abundantly available in India. Natural fibers are not only strong and lightweight but also relatively very cheap. The present work describes the development and characterization of a new set of natural fiber based polymer composites consisting of coconut coir as reinforcement and epoxy resin. The newly developed composites are characterized with respect to their mechanical characteristics. Experiments are carried out to study the effect of fiber length on mechanical behavior of these epoxy based polymer
composites. In the present work, coir composites are developed and their mechanical properties are evaluated. Scanning electron micrographs obtained from fractured surfaces were used for a qualitative evaluation of the interfacial properties of coir/epoxy. These results indicate that coir can be used as a potential reinforcing material for many structural and non-structural applications. This work can be further extended to study other aspects of such composites like effect of fiber content, fiber orientation, loading pattern, fiber treatment on mechanical behavior of coconut coir based polymer composites. Finally, the SEM of fractured surfaces has been done to study their surface morphology.