Development and Analysis of Natural Composite Material - Popat Asabe - Bog

Composite materials are emerging chiefly in response to fulfill demands from technology due to rapidly advancing activities in aircrafts, aerospace and automotive industries. Natural fibers have recently attracted the attention of scientists and technologists because of the advantages that these fibers provide over conventional reinforcement materials, and the development of bio fiber composites has been a subject of interest for the past few years. The present work focuses on investigation of mechanical properties of banana fiber/epoxy resin composite at 30%, 40% and 50% volume fractions of banana fiber and different fiber orientation 00, 450 & 900. The mechanical properties like tensile strength, flexural strength, are experimentally evaluated. The experimental results of tensile testing are validated using software package ANSYS.12.0 the obtained results are very much closer to the experimental results. To probe the bonding between the reinforcement and matrix, the scanning Electron microgram of fractured surface of banana epoxy composite were recorded. So it is better to use banana/epoxy composite with 40% volume fraction and 0 degree fiber orientation for various applications.