Mechanical Behavior of Orange Peel Reinforced Epoxy Composite

Abstract

Over the last century, polymers have emerged as one of the most indispensible components used in everyday life, epoxy or poly-epoxide being one such example. Until recently, synthetic filler materials have been the preferred choice for reinforcement of epoxy to improve its toughness. However, natural filler and fiber materials are emerging as suitable alternatives to synthetic materials for reinforcing polymers such as epoxy due to their environment friendliness, high abundance, renewability, and cost effectiveness.
Several research efforts have been put to study the effectiveness of natural fiber based materials on the mechanical behaviour of epoxy composites, focusing mainly on fibers and their weight percent’s within the composites.
The present experimental study aims at learning Mechanical behavior of orange peel reinforced epoxy composites. Composites having 5, 10, 20 and 30% weight fraction of orange peel were made using hand layup method. The fabricated composite samples were cut according to the ASTM standards for different experiments. Hardness test and density test were carried out at the samples. The maximum hardness, density, tensile, flexural and ILSS are getting for the material prepared with the 20 % reinforced orange peel epoxy composite.