Mechanical, Thermal and Tribological Behaviour of Surface Modified Jute Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composites

Abstract

The environmental issue has urged the researchers and scientists to emphasis considerable attention in the development of recyclable and biodegradable composite materials. Fiber reinforced polymer composites have a wide variety of applications as a class of structural materials because of their advantages such as ease of fabrication, relatively low cost of production & superior strength as compared to the neat polymer resins. The fiber which serves as a reinforcement in polymers may be either synthetic or natural. Although, synthetic fibers such as glass, carbon etc. possess high strength, their field of applications are limited because of their higher costs of production. The advantages of natural fibers as compared to the synthetic fibers include low density, low cost, comparable specific properties, nontoxicity, abundant availability, biodegradability, recyclability, etc. Despite many advantages, the main drawback of natural fibers is their hydrophilic nature, which drops the compatibility with hydrophobic polymeric matrix during composite fabrications. Thus, it is necessary to modify the fiber surface to make it more hydrophobic and also more compatible with polymer matrices. Recently, there is an increasing interest in hybrid composites that are made by reinforcement of two or more different types of fibers/fillers in a single matrix, because these materials attain a range of properties that cannot be obtained with a particular kind of reinforcement. Further, material costs can be reduced by careful selection of reinforcing fibers/fillers. The objective of the present research work is to study the mechanical, thermal and tribological behaviour of jute fiber reinforced epoxy composites. The composites were fabricated with four different fiber loadings (10, 20, 30 and 40 wt.%) and at three different filler loading (0, 5 and 10 wt.%). The effect of jute fiber and Al2O3 filler loading on the properties of composites has been analyzed. Two different chemical treatment methods such as alkaline and benzoyl-chloride have been used for the surface modification of fibers. Three-body abrasive wear tests are conducted at different abrading distances (50, 60, 70 and 80 m) and at different normal loads (10, 20, 30 and 40 N). The design of experiment approach using Taguchi methodology is employed for the parametric analysis of abrasive wear process. The morphology of abraded surfaces is examined by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and possible wear mechanisms are discussed. The study reveals that the properties of composites are significantly influenced by the fiber content, filler content and the chemical treatment of fiber. The chemically modified fiber based composites show better mechanical, thermal and wear properties as compared to the untreated jute fiber based composites.