Investigation on the fracture and mechanical behaviour of jute and glass fiber mat reinforced epoxy hybrid composites

Abstract

The jute fiber is traditionally used for various structural parts of the newlineconstruction and agricultural applications. In the Last three decades, the jute newlinefiber is used to develop the jute fiber reinforced polymer composites for light newlineweight applications. However, the hydrophilic nature of jute fiber reduces the newlinemechanical properties of the polymer composites. Therefore, for increasing newlinethe mechanical properties and reducing the hydrophilic of jute fiber in the newlinepolymer composites, the novel hybrid fiber polymer composite is needed by newlinehybridisation of jute with glass fiber. In this connection, the present work is newlineto develop the jute fiber woven mat and glass fiber random mat epoxy hybrid newlinecomposites with different orientation of jute (0°/90°, 30°/120°, 45°/135°, newline60°/150°, and 75°/165°) mats and a gram per square meter (300, 375 and newline450 GSM) of glass mats, and to study the impact of fiber mat orientation, newlinenumber of layers and GSM on Mode-I fracture and mechanical properties. newlineThe hybrid composites are developed by hand layup method followed newlineto compression moulding technique. During the composite development, the newlineouter layers are placed as glass fiber mat, each layer of jute and glass mat are newlinedipped in the resin with hardener solution and then laminated in the mould. newlineHereafter, the closed mould is kept in the hydraulic press for four hour to newlineallow solidification. After removing the solidified composite plate from the newlinemould, fracture samples are cut in according to ASTM standard. The single newlineedge notched bending (SENB) and compact tension (CT) testing method are newlineused to study the fracture toughness of the composites under the Mode-I newlinefracture analysis. newline