STUDY OF PROPERTIES OF BANANA FIBER REINFORCED COMPOSITES

Natural fiber composites are nowadays being used in various engineering applications to increase the strength and to optimise the weight and the cost of the product. Various natural fibres such as coir, sisal, jute, coir and banana are used as reinforcement materials. In this paper both treated and untreated banana fiber are taken for the development of the hybrid composite material. The untreated banana fiber is treated by sodium hydroxide to increase the wettability. The untreated banana fiber and sodium hydroxide treated banana fiber are used as reinforcing material for both Epoxy resin matrix and Vinyl ester resin matrix. Coconut shell powder is used along with both untreated and treated banana fiber as a reinforcing material. In this process the banana fiber is treated with 5% of sodium hydroxide for one hour and the specimen is fabricated by hand moulding process. The mould used for fabricating the hybrid composite material is made up of aluminium with a debonding agent applied on the inner side. The banana fiber content is kept constant to 30% of weight fraction of entire composite material. The variation in mechanical properties are studied and analyzed. Here, the tensile strength has calculated by universal testing machine, impact strength has calculated by pendulum impact tester and flexural strength has calculated by universal testing machine with flexural test arrangement of the specimen. Then the treated and untreated specimens are analyzed and compared through Scanning Electron Microscope to study about its adhesion between fiber and resin matrix and surface morphology.