Facture Toughness Investigation of Chopped Sisal Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Resin Composite
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Date
2017-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Natural fiber reinforced polymer matrix composites have found increasing attention from the
recent decades because of its high strength to weight ratio, environmental friendliness, etc. Past
studies show that synthetic and natural fiber such as glass, carbon, jute, hemp, banana etc., have
been used in fiber reinforced polymer matrix composite. In this paper work, sisal fiber is used as
reinforcement and an investigation has been carried out to make use of sisal fiber made epoxy
resin matrix composite. Therefore, this work intends to study the fracture toughness analysis of
chopped sisal fiber reinforced polymer matrix composite using finite element methods in terms
of the linear elastic fracture mechanics, this includes the early investigations and recent advances
of fracture toughness test methods which include the most important fracture mechanics
parameters the so called stress intensity factor K.
The sisal fiber were extracted from Ethiopian highland sisal plant by retting and combing process
manually and after extraction 10% sodium hydroxide was used for further surface treatment for
the improvement of bond & interfacial shear strength of the sisal fiber. The fracture toughness
test of chopped sisal fiber reinforced epoxy composite material were carried out using test
samples which is prepared According to the ASTM standard. The specimen has been fabricated
by using the epoxy resin (AY-105) as a matrix and the hardener (HY-905) and the chopped sisal
fiber as a reinforcement material with the 15%,25%, 30%, 35% and 40% fiber weight fraction,
random oriented chopped fibers by using hand layup fabrication technique.
The 30 wt% chopped SFREC was found the high stress intensity factor and this result also
compared and validated using FEM analysis and the error from the experiment is measures up to
1.08% for stress intensity factor and 2.286% for strain release rate. This signifies the validity of
the experiment.
Furthermore, both results justify that the 30/70 composition of chopped sisal fiber and epoxy
resin matrix has robust fracture characteristics with KIC of 5.48 MPa.m1/2 and critical strain
energy release rate (GIC) of 13.72 MPa.mm and results of this study indicate that using chopped
sisal fibers as reinforcement in polymer matrix could successfully develop a composite material
in terms of high strength and rigidity for light weight material.
Key words: sisal fiber, epoxy, composite, hand layup, stress intensity factor (KIC), strain energy
release rate (GIC), FEM
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Keywords
sisal fiber; epoxy, composite; hand layup; stress intensity factor (KIC); strain energy release rate (GIC); FEM