Mechanical Testing and Numerical Analysis of Flax/Glass Epoxy Hybrid Composite Material

Abstract

The natural fibres, as reinforcing medium will tremendously use in polymer composite industries due to rapid development of research in this field to maintain the sustainable materials towards its application. In this paper, Bidirectional woven E-Glass and Flax Fabrics with Epoxy resin were used to fabricate the two different composites with (0°, 45°) orientation by hand layup method. Laminate-1 made of four flax/epoxy layers and four Glass/Epoxy layers consecutively arranged one after the other, Laminate-2 made of four Flax/Epoxy layers sandwiched between the two Glass/Epoxy layers top side and two Glass/Epoxy layers bottom side of the laminate. Tensile test and bending test results obtained as per ASTM standards. Finite element analysis was used in ABAQUS software for the simulation of important mechanical properties in tension and bending of the two laminates. Theoretical results obtained in FEA were compared with the experimental results of both laminates in terms of Force-displacement curve on the elastic domain. The error percentage of the maximum strength of two laminates were 4.8% and 8.04% respectively in the tensile test, similarly the maximum flexural strength of two laminates in order of 5.33% and 2.54% in bending test. Due to this experiment, it observed that the strength of the laminate is more in the hybrid composite than the composite made of purely natural fibres.

Mechanical properties of biofiber/glass reinforced hybrid composites produced by hand lay-up method: A review

“…Gupta [64] investigated the static behavior of F/G biocomposites and reported that the lay-up sequence GFGH was better than the FGFH arrangement in terms of tensile, flexural, compressive, and impact properties. Kumar et al [65] determined the properties of 8-layered F/G epoxy composites. Ramesh [13] conducted the SEM analysis of F/G epoxy composites and reported that the specimens with 0 • fiber orientation outperformed that of 90 • fiber orientation.…”