Fiber reinforced polymer composites has been used in a variety of application because of their many advantages such as relatively low cost of production, easy to fabricate, and superior strength compare to neat polymer resins. Reinforcement in polymer is either synthetic or natural. Synthetic fiber such as glass, carbon, etc. has high specific strength but their fields of application are limited due to higher cost of production. Recently there is an increase interest in natural composites which are made by reinforcement of natural fiber. In this connection, an investigation has been carried out to make better utilization of coconut coir fiber for making value added products. The objective of the present research work is to study the physical, mechanical, and water absorption behavior of coir/glass fiber reinforced epoxy based hybrid composites. The effect of fiber loading and length on mechanical properties like tensile strength, flexural strength, and hardness of composites is studied. The experimental results reveal that the maximum strength properties is observed for the composite with 10 wt% fiber loading at 15 mm length. The maximum flexural strength of 63 MPa is observed for composites with 10 wt% fiber loading at 15 mm fiber length. Similarly, the maximum hardness value of 21.3 Hv is obtained for composites with 10 wt% fiber loading at 20 mm fiber length. Also, the surface morphology of fractured surfaces after tensile testing is examined using scanning electron microscope (SEM). POLYM. COMPOS., 35:925–930, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers

In this research, a newly explored natural fiber named sea purslane fiber (SP) was applied as a reinforcing material with widely used thermosetting polymer epoxy polymer. Chemical treatments on the fibers were done with NaOH followed by acrylic acid treatment. Reinforcing acrylic acid treated and untreated SP fibers at variable weight percentages of fiber loading, variety of composite samples (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 wt%) were developed. The mechanical characteristics of the composites were found to improve initially with increasing filler content until reaching the optimum (20 wt%) fiber loading, after which they began to fall. At 20 wt% filler loading various properties like physical & chemical (density, water absorption, X-ray diffraction), mechanical (tensile, flexural, impact, micro-hardness) and thermal (thermogravimetric analysis) properties were examined and compared with untreated fiber reinforced composites. It was noticed that the treated fiber composites reveal better result as compared with untreated fibers composites. The findings provide manufacturers and engineers with a broad concept of how to use this composite to reduce weight, particularly in automotive applications.

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