Mechanical Behavior of Bagasse Fiber Epoxy Composites at Liquid Nitrogen Temperature

Abstract

India is a country which lives still in its villages and the farm products constitute the separate joints and bones of the backbone of the country’s economy out of which natural fiber has been an important and profitable product since the beginning of business. In recent years the natural fiber epoxy composites have attracted substantial importance as a potential structural material. The mechanical properties of several types of epoxy systems are designed based on the chemical structure, network structure and morphology aiming at cryogenic applications such as cryogenic wind tunnels, cryogenic transport vessels, support structures in space shuttles and rockets. In these applications they are often under cyclic loading. The attractive features of natural fibers like jute, sisal, coir and banana have been their low cost, light weights, high specific modulus, renew ability and biodegradability. Natural fibers are lignocellulosic in nature. These composites are gaining importance due to their non-carcinogenic and bio-degradable nature. The natural fiber composites can be very cost effective material especially for building and construction industry. However in many instances residues from traditional crops such as rice husk or sugarcane bagasse or from the usual processing operations of timber industries do not meet the requisites of being long fibers. Bagasse contains about 40% cellulose, 30% hemicellulose, and 15% lignin. The present use of bagasse is mainly as a fuel in the sugar cane mill furnaces. It is felt that the value of this agricultural residue can be upgraded by bonding with resin to produce composites suitable for building materials.
Keeping this in view the present work has been undertaken to develop a polymer matrix composite (epoxy resin) using bagasse fiber as reinforcement with volume fractions 10,15 & 20% and to study its mechanical properties at cryogenic temperature.
In the next part of this project the main emphasis was laid on the experimental work relating to the mechanical behaviour of this composite at liquid nitrogen temperature.