Processing and characterization of coconut shell particles reinforced vinyl ester composites

Abstract

Recently, the interest of material engineers and researchers are newlinegoing on environmentally-friendly composites due to increasingly rising newlineenvironmental awareness. Generally, every single part of the plants and newlinevegetables can be used for our human purposes. Among various natural bio newlinebased plants, coconut tree is one of the important economical plants in South newlineregion of the India. Coconut shell and coir pith particles are thrown up as a newlinewaste product abundantly in the region where the parts of coconut trees are a newlinemajor agriculture product. But, coconut shell and coir pith particles are newlinerecognized by researchers as the potential material to be used as reinforcing newlineagents in the composites. In the present research work, coconut shell particles newlinewere reinforced with the vinyl ester resin matrix. The coconut shell particles newlinereinforced vinyl ester composites were prepared for varying contents of the newlinecoconut shell particles and their mechanical properties was evaluated. newlineComposites have been fabricated using a simple hand lay-up technique. The newlineinitial addition of the coconut shell particles gives the lower level of tensile newlineproperties compared to the neat resin specimen. The mechanical properties are newlineimproving with an increase in the content of coconut shell particles up to newline35 wt.% and then dropped. Beyond the 35 wt% of coconut shell particles, newlinecomposites reach the brittle behaviour due to the poor wettability between the newlinecoconut shell particles and the vinyl ester resin matrix. newlineMoreover, the coconut shell particles were used in the untreated newlineand alkali treated conditions to understand the mechanical properties of newlinecomposite specimens newline