Modelling and Analysis of Pineapple Honeycomb Core Sandwich Composites

Abstract

In the present scenario,it has been witnessed that the use of natural fibers has been employed for the wide variety of applications because of its innumerable advantages as compared to the conventional materials. In this thesis, pineapple leaf fiber(PALF)has been employed along with the glass fiber for enhancing the mechanical properties of the composites. Honeycomb sandwich composites are the special type of composites materials which are fabricated by bonding core structure of the honeycomb sandwiches with the thin plate skins at the top and bottom. These are the special type of hybrid composites where the main concentration is to have a sustained mechanical property with reduced overall weight. This reduced weight makes it ideal for the wide range of applications like automobile, aerospace, constructions and many more. Square honeycomb structures possess high flexural rigidity, bending strength and compression. In the present work, the slotting technique has been utilized for the fabrication of honeycomb core structure.Sandwich composites with honeycomb are better known for absorbing impact energy. To make it usable for the broad range of applications, the outer plates of the sandwich composite is made from a woven mat of glass fibers and an inner core with short pineapple fiber. This has been done in order to make it sure that the hydrophobic glass fiber woven mat composite laminate does not allow the water to interact with the hydrophilic inner core material. Specimens were tested for the flexural strength and the compression strength. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) has also been utilized for predicting the possible causes of the failure in the core structure. Experimental results were validated with the results obtained from finite element method (FEM)