Hybrid Jute/Glass Reinforced Laminate Mechanical Properties

Abstract

In the two last decades, extraction and use procedures of natural fibers have known an important increase for the reinforcement of composite materials called 'Bi-composites'. This category of fibers possesses a lot of advantages upon those traditional synthetic such as: Abundantly available, reduced cost, lightness and satisfactory specific performances. The current study has the aim of characterizing a new hybrid laminate made up of 4 plies; the upper and lower ones are reinforced with glass bidirectional fabrics while the two central ones are reinforced with natural Jute woven fabrics. The main idea of this work is to preserve sufficient mechanical characteristics by reinforcing the most solicited layers with glass fabric and, in the same time, to ensure an economy and a reduced weight through the reinforcement of the intermediary layers by Jute fabrics. The mechanical characterization was carried out by two kinds of static trials: uniaxial tensile test, three points bending and ILSS tests in order to compare the mechanical properties of this composite laminate with those of a four layers totally glass reinforced laminate. The mechanical trials have given us characteristics, values of the hybrid laminate superior than those of the synthetically reinforced laminate in terms of Flexion and ILSS Strengths but lower in terms of tensile strength. And yet, performances obtained with hybrid Jute/ Glass reinforced laminates allow a prediction of actual perspectives for substituting glass fiber by others natural for semi-structural moderately loaded elements applications to combine performance and economy.