The recent development of natural fiber-reinforced polymer composites have shown innumerable economic and environmental benefits for a vast array of engineering applications. It is quintessential to investigate the effect of water absorption on the composites that remain in the water for a maximum of their intended service period. This study is an effort in this direction that investigates the effect of water absorption on thermo-mechanical properties of flaxhemp-reinforced epoxy composites fabricated using compression hand layup technique with different weight fraction of fiber. The fabricated composites have been characterized physically (density and water absorption), thermomechanically (tensile, flexural, thermal conductivity, and dynamical mechanical analysis), and morphologically (scanning electron microscopy [SEM]). The analysis revealed that hemp-reinforced composites (S1) had the highest water absorption capabilities in comparison to the flax-reinforced composites (S5).Higher water absorption capability had an adverse effect on the mechanical properties of fabricated composites. However, hybrid composites (S2, S3, and S4) reported better performance with regard to S1. The increased water content, however, increased the thermal conductivity of composites and maximum has been revealed for S1 (0.82 W/mK) and minimum for S5 (0.48 W/mK). The water molecules showed detrimental effects on the viscoelastic properties and revealed S3 have better interlocking bond with the lowest reduction in storage modulus (12%) and glass transition temperature (4 C) in comparison to S1 (30%) under wet conditions. A comparative analysis of the thermo-mechanical properties was also made for developed composites under dry, saturated, and re-dried conditions. The SEM has been used to characterize the morphological and fracture behavior of the fabricated composites under the influence of water uptake. The effects of water molecules on the hygrothermal aging index and diffusion co-efficient have also been discussed. Overall, the hybridization of
The present study is focused on investigating the effect of the micro-mechanical properties of the natural fiber- (pineapple leaf fiber) reinforced polymeric composites by the addition of pineapple leaf micro-particulates. For the investigation, a two-step approach has been used. In the first step, finite element method-based analysis has been used to characterize the tensile and shear properties of the pineapple leaf fiber-reinforced polymeric composites (FRP) and pineapple paticulate-reinforced polymeric composites (PRC), and the adopted finite element method-based analysis has been validated through the experimental approach. In the second step, the validated finite element method-based analysis has been used to characterize the micro-mechanical properties of the hybrid fiber-reinforced polymeric composites (HFRP) fabricated using the pineapple leaf micro-particle embedded epoxy as a matrix material and the pineapple leaf fiber has been used as reinforcing material. It has been observed through the analysis that the micro-mechanical properties of HFRP were superior to that of FRP. There has been a 10.16% increment in Young’s modulus in the longitudinal direction and a 26.36% increment in Young’s modulus in the transverse direction for HFRP over FRP. Further, a 9.91% increment for in-plane shear modulus and 26.17% increment in outer-plane shear modulus have been observed for HFRP in comparison to FRP. These results suggest that pineapple leaf particulates are good reinforcing materials to enhance the transverse direction and outer plane micro-mechanical properties of the fiber-reinforced composite.
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