The utilization of coconut fibers as reinforcement in polymer composites has been increase significantly due to their low cost and high specification of mechanical properties. Whereas kevlar fibers has widely used as the core material in flexible body armors due to its great mechanical properties, such as high strength, light weight, good chemical resistance and thermal stability. The research work is concerned with the evaluation of high speed impact and flexural test of hybrid textile reinforced epoxy composites. Samples were prepared from coir yarn, kevlar yarn, interlaced of coir and kevlar yarn with different warp/weft orientation and pure epoxy as control specimen. The woven samples were produced using handloom and the composites specimens were prepared using hand lay-up technique. From the results obtained, it was found that woven kevlar composites samples displayed the highest impact properties while it exhibits the lowest flexural properties. Results also showed that the composite plate for woven coir yarn (warp) and kevlar yarn (weft) has the flexural strength and impact strength of 17 MPa and 67 kJ/m², which presented as the nearest properties to woven Kevlar composite respectively. These results indicate that coir as a natural fiber can be used as a potential reinforcing material for high impact resistance such as body armors in order to reduce the usage of synthetic materials whilst utilizing the natural resources.
Abstract. This research focuses on the study of oblique impact on kenaf reinforced composite plate. This study summarizes modeling analysis of targets subjected to certain angle of collisions which ranging from 0"-45". Due to the low density, natural fiber such as kenaf fiber provides relatively good mechanical properties than glass fiber. Thus, natwal fibers have high potential for better reinforcement in light weight structures such as aircraft, automobile. In this research, the velocity impact analysis is conducted by using the commercial finite element analysis software, ANSYS. A few finite element models of the nonwoven composite panel and a rigid impactor is developed using ANSYS software. Experimental investigations in determining mechanical properties and validating purposes are conducted in earlier study by using Universal Testing Machine and High Speed Impact Puncher. Total force, total energy, deformation, and energy absorption of kenaf reinforced composite for oblique impact are analyzed and discussed. The rise of oblique angle will increase the energy absorption of the composite. IntroductionOver the past few decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of natural fibers in composite applications. These types of composites present many advantages compared to synthetic fibers, such as low tool wear, low density, cheaper cost, availability, and biodegradability [I-21. The response of composite materials to ballistic impact has been investigated by many researchers [3-61. It is obvious from the open literature that research on ballistic impact has been focused on the high performance fibres, metals and ceramics. In replacing metals and ceramics, syntactic fiber such as aramid fiber was used to produce more lightweight composites. But, it's consumes to increasing cost of composite to be produced. Therefore, many researches had been done on natural fiber based composite [4-71. Producing composite samples and performing the experimental will consume much time and cost. By using finite element analysis software, the natural composite model can be numerically created in short time and many tests can be virtually performed. But, it is important to do a validation process by comparing the experimental and numerical results obtained before any hither work conducted. Natural impacts in which the projectile strikes the target vertically (90" towards plane) are virtually nonexistent. Its normally occurs in oblique impact by which the impacting occurs in a certain angle of collision.
The interest in utilizing natural fiber as reinforce in polymer composites has increased in recent years due to their advantages like availability, cheap, renewable, lightweight, and biodegradable. However, the main challenge of natural fiber to be used as reinforcement in polymer is their hydrophobic nature. One of the solutions is via chemical modification like mercerization treatment. In this study, the effect of alkali concentrations at 2 and 10 w/v %; and soaking temperature at 30°C and 80°C on a kenaf fiber bundles mean diameter was investigated. Untreated kenaf fiber was used as a control unit. Kenaf fiber diameter was measured using a Leica video analyzer. Microstructure change of kenaf fiber before and after mercerization treatment conditions was identified using JOEL scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Finally, an interaction of alkali treatment conditions on kenaf fiber bundles mean diameter value was statistically analyzed using a commercially available statistical software package. The results showed that kenaf fiber bundle mean diameter was reduced by 30.12% to 42.92% after mercerization treatment. From analysis of variance, the main effect of alkali concentration value was 6.075 and the temperature value was 1.135. The main effect plots reveal that alkali concentration had a higher impact on mean diameter changes compared to soaking temperature factor.
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