Erosion wear behaviour of bamboo fiber based hybrid composites

Abstract

In recent years, natural fiber reinforced polymer composites have received much attention because of their many advantages such as lightweight, nonabrasive, nontoxic, low cost and biodegradable properties. Despite their numerous advantages, they suffer from low modulus, lower strength, and poor moisture resistance compared to synthetic fiber reinforced composites. Hybrid composite materials that contains two or more different types of fiber in which one type of fiber could complement with what are lacking in the other. Hybridization of natural fiber with stronger and high corrosion resistance synthetic fibers like glass can improve the various properties such as strength, stiffness etc. In this study, a series of epoxy based composites reinforced with both glass and bamboo fiber are fabricated. The objective of the present work is to study the physical, mechanical, dynamic mechanical and erosion wear behaviour of the composites. It further outlines a methodology based on Taguchi’s experimental design approach to make a parametric analysis of erosion characteristics. Finally, the surface morphology of the eroded composites specimen has made using SEM study.