Mechanical and Tribological Behavior of Luffa Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in finding new applications for naturalfibre-reinforced composites that are traditionally used for making ropes, mats, carpets, fancy articles etc.This work presents the evaluation of mechanical and tribological behaviour of luffafiber reinforced epoxy composites.The composites were prepared by varying the weight percentage (wt %) in the range of10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% wt %of chopped fibre of 10mm length.The specimens are expurgated as per the ASTM standards.The Mechanical properties such as flexural strength, impact strength and hardness were studied for the fabricated luffafiber reinforced composite.The impact strength varies between 2.978 and 7.387 kJ/mm 2 .The tensile strength varies from 22.43 to 47.52 N/mm 2 .Flexural test shows a variation of 9.75 to 47.45 N/mm 2 and a variation in hardness was observed between the range of 22.22 and 60.22.The test resultsshow that the higher value of hardness and impact strength was obtained at 50wt % of fiber loading, whereas, the flexural and tensile strength value is higher in 40wt% of fiber loading.