Measurement and analysis of mechanical and thermal properties of sic on snake grass fiber and its hybrid composite

Abstract

In the view of reducing the adverse effect on environment due to newlinesynthetic materials, nations in the world are focusing on the green materials newlinesuch as natural fiber reinforce composites. On the other side, the industrial newlinerevolution made the industries to seek the alternate for conventional materials newlinewith no compromise in the performance. In the meantime, the natural fiber newlinereinforced composites were identified to fulfill these requirements cheaper. So, newlineit is inevitable to focus on the development of new natural fiber reinforced newlinecomposites and testing their performance .This work involved in developing and testing a new composite using Snake Grass Fiber (SGF) as reinforcement in the epoxy resin. Further, the SGF Reinforced Composite (SGF RC) was hybridized using Sisal Fiber (SF), the performance was tested and compared with SGF RC. Also, the addition of newlineSilicon Carbide (SiC) in these composites was studied. The fabrication and newlinetesting of SGF RC and SGF/SF RC were planned based on the literatures newlinereviewed. The detailed summary of the work carried out as follows. newlineThe snake grass fiber was extracted from the snake grass leaves by newlinewater retting method. The cleaned leaves were immersed in water for three newlineweeks to degrade the pulpy material. At the end of the third week, the leaves newlinewere taken out and washed in running water to remove the residual degraded newlinepulpy material to get clean fibers which were dried in shadow. The sisal fibers newlinewere extracted from the sisal leaves by mechanical decortication process which newlineinvolves a large circular rotating drum fixed with blunt knives by which the newlineleaves were crushed and beaten to remove the unwanted stuffs. The sisal fibers newlineobtained were cleaned in running water and dried to remove the moisture newlinecontent completely. These sisal and snake grass fibers were further undergoing newlinea chemical treatment to alter the surface morphology in the view of enhancing newlinethe strong bond with resin. The fibers were immersed in the alkyl solution newlinewhich was prepared using 10 kgs of water with 50 grams of s