Study of flexural and compressive strength of glass fiber reinforced graphite composite

Abstract

The attempt of this work is to development of glass fiber reinforced graphite composite by the addition of binder solid pitch. Different physical properties such as bulk density, apparent porosity, flexural strength and compressive strength are assessed with respect to different binder content and glass fiber reinforcement. Binder content is increasing with increment of fiber reinforcement, which ultimately increasing the porosity or decreasing the bulk density. Highest flexural strength 128 kg/cm2 is obtained under optimum 0.5 wt. % fibers and 20 wt. % binder content. Optimum content of glass fiber follows crack wake bridging mechanism and enhancement of flexural strength. Highest compressive strength 118 Kg/cm2 is observed in presence of 0.5 wt% fibers and 25 wt% binder pitch. More fiber content jumbled up during mixing and develops non-uniform matrix which reduces the mechanical properties enormously at even green stage.