Mechanical and Tribological Behavior of Rubber Wood Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite

Abstract

In today’s modern age growing population and product requirement has triggered the issue of low cost manufacturing material which should also be renewable resource to meet the requirement easily anywhere in the world. Composites are combination of two or more materials that provide characteristics which cannot be achieved by single material system. This is achieved by cohesion of the materials made by physically combining two or more compatible materials, different in characteristics, composition and sometimes in form. Natural fibers have attracted attention of many researchers as filler for the composite materials because of their low cost, eco-friendly and ease of availability; hence natural fibers are suitable alternative of traditional synthetic and inorganic fibers. Accordingly extensive studies on preparation of polymer matrix composite (PMC) replacing the synthetic fibers with natural fibers like Jute, Sisal, Pineapple, Bamboo, Kenaf and Bagasse were carried out. These plant fibers have many advantages over glass fiber or carbon fiber like renewability, environmental friendly, low cost, lightweight and high specific mechanical performance.
Among the various biomasses, Rubber wood is a particulate fiber which is used as a fiber after completed period of extracting latex from green rubber trees. Against this back ground the present research work has been undertaken with an objective to explore the use of natural fiber Rubber wood, as a reinforcement material in epoxy base. Mechanical and solid particle erosion wear behaviours of Rubber wood reinforced epoxy polymer composite have been studied. All these tests have been carried out as per ASTM standard. To study the mechanical and erosion properties of the composite, different volume fraction of fiber have been taken (10%, 20%, 30% & 40%).
These fibers were randomly distributed in the matrix. Usual hand lay -up technique has been adopted for manufacturing the composite. It was observed that tensile and flexural strength increases with increase in fiber content and best result was found for 30% wt. fraction of Rubber wood fiber reinforced epoxy composite. Solid particle erosion test was also carried out and significant reduction in erosion strength was found in the Rubber wood fiber filled epoxy composite. Erosion test of the samples characterized the Rubber wood epoxy composite as a semi-brittle material. Finally scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) tests has been carried out which further explains the characteristics of the composite samples.