Kevlar fiber reinforced polymer composites are rapidly growing in manufacturing applications such bicycle tires and racing sails to body armor, bullet proof vests, military helmets, walking boots etc. Kevlar epoxy composite material using the Kevlar fiber and epoxy resin LY-556 was fabricated with manual hand layup procedure. The mechanical characteristics like tensile, impact strength and flexural rigidity were evaluated. With the results obtained it is found that kevlar epoxy composite provides better mechanical characteristics than aluminum. In this work, the possibility of replacing aluminum with Kevlar reinforced epoxy composite material is investigated for various applications viz. manufacturing of bus body frame, bullet proof vests, automobile body, sports applications, fire proof clothing, military helmets etc. Also, the FE analysis is carried out with MIDAS NFX software to correlate the test results with FEA.
The present work aims to analyze the mechanical characteristics of sisal fiber over other natural fibers and non-natural fibers. Over the past decades, natural fibers are established as promising raw material for development of major components in the field of automobile and aviation industry. Sisal fibers are extracted from Agave sisal Ana plant and fibers sheets have been prepared in bidirectional method and reinforced with epoxy, followed up angle ply laminate using hand layup technique. After curing, laminate was cut by CNC machine as per ASTM standards. The mechanical properties were determined and observed that the strength properties were found lower than the glass fiber reinforced composites. However these natural fiber composites have enough strength and stiffness and could be used in various non-structural critical components in aviation and automobile industries for the problem of weight penalty.
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