Abstract: With a view of exploring the potential use of natural recourses, we made an attempt to

fabricate dyneema fiber and sisal fibre reinforced – unidirectional epoxy composite by hand lay-up
method. Natural fiber composites a r e renewable, cheap and biodegradable. Their easy availability,
lower density, higher specific properties, lower cost, satisfactory mechanical and thermal properties,
non-corrosive nature, makes them an attractive ecological alternative to glass, carbon or other man-
made synthetic fibers. In this work, the effect of dyneema fiber on mechanical properties of sisel fiber
epoxy composites are investigated. The composite has been made with dyneema incorporating natural
sisal fiber with epoxy as bonding material.

Keywords:, Sisal fiber, Dyneema fiber, Epoxy , Mechanical properties, Structural analysis

1.Introduction: Natural fibers have played a significant role in human civilization since prehistoric times.
The human beings depend on them for garments and other simple domestic uses as well as complex
applications such as land dwellings and reed-built sailing craft etc. The natural fibers – reinforced
composite had the advantage of being light, strong, cheap, nonabrasive, high specific mechanical and
thermal properties and are more environmental friendly. However these have some drawbacks such as
brittleness, moisture absorption and low processing temperatures. Thermoplastic polymers especially
polypropylene are produced and used today in vast quantities. However, they are seldom used as pure
polymers and are usually combined with mineral fillers like fly ash, graphite, silicon carbide etc. Fillers
find application in the polymer industry almost exclusively to improve thermal and mechanical
properties. The properties of composites mainly depend on the matrix, fibers, and other interfacial
bonding.

Literary surey

Several investigators have used natural fibers as reinforcement in the IConAMMA-2016 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 149 (2016) 012095 doi:10.1088/1757-
899X/149/1/012095 Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s)
and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1
development of green composites. The adhesion between the reinforcing fibers and the matrix in
composite material plays an important role in final thermal properties of the composites. Material
characteristics play an important role in manufacturing and design engineering. Knowledge of the
response of the work material during manufacturing is essential for adopting more efficient, effective
and economical processing methods. Proper understanding of the response of the work material under
different situations is possible only if the characteristics of a material are known. Composites with
natural fibers are gaining increasing attention for a variety of applications. Available natural fibers such
as jute, coir, sisal, and Palmyra belong to this category[1].

Glass, carbon, boron, Kevlar fibers are being used as reinforcing materials in Fiber Reinforced Plastics
[FRP] which have been widely accepted as materials for structural and non-structural applications.
Synthetic fibers are not eco-friendly. Hence attention has been focused on the utilization of natural
fibers for the production of fiber-reinforced materials. One of the natural fiber-polymer composites are
investigated by Paramasivan and Abdulkalam, A.P.J. [2] using sisal fibers and epoxy matrix. The
fabrication process followed by winding and laminating technique, that which is of easy and low cost
technique. According to this technique, to improve the tensile strength of sisal epoxy composites is up
to 250- 350 MPa which is near to strength of glass-epoxy composite with same volume fraction. As sisal
fiber is of low density, that the specific strength of glass fiber composites can be compared with specific
strength of sisal fiber composites. This work denotes the easiness of developing new composites by
reinforcing easily available natural fibers, to be used in areas like construction and consumer goods. It
also reports the use of electron probe microanalysis for calculating the filler scattering in sisal-polymer
composites. Chopped sisal fibre polyester composites are prepared by the press mold technique.
Mechanical properties of the composites are evaluated through accelerated weathering tests conducted
pertaining to ASTM D-520 specification. It is found that the specific modulus of the composite is 1.90
compared with 2.71 for glass fibre reinforced plastics, while the specific strength is of the same order as
that of polyester and 30% less than glass fiber reinforced plastics. Accelerated testing revealed little
change in initial modulus, reductions of 5% in ultimate tensile strength, 16% in flexural strength and
5.4% in water absorption. Lakkad.S.C. et al [6] in this work, evaluate the mechanical properties like
tensile, compressive strength and young’s modules of elasticity of bamboo specimens and these results
are compared with same properties of mild steel and glass fiber reinforced plastics. Jindal.U.C. [7]
compared the ultimate tensile strength of dendrocalamus stricutus specie of bamboos with mild steel.
The bamboo composites have nearly six times more than that of mild steel. Also compared the
properties of different orientations of fiber placing in composite like parallel and transverse orientations
of bamboo fibers. Fiber incorporated plastics have been very popular due to their flexibility, their
lightness and the ease of fabrication of complicated shapes with economic savings in contrast to fiber
reinforced metals/alloys. In addition, these composites can be easily substituted for conventional
materials in several areas such as the building industry, transportation and consumer goods. Some of
these attempts made in recent times for the utilization of natural fibres through composite material
technology have indicated their potential as substitute for the conventional materials such as wood and
glass fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP) in many applications. There are, however, a number of limitations,
including cost factor and their performance over a long time duration, which need further research.
Extensive literature is available on the production and mechanical behavior of composites obtained by
reinforcing epoxy with fibre of glass, boron, carbon silicon carbide etc. Many researchers in the past
have developed composites with natural fibres such as sisal hene, quen, jute, banana, cotton, etc. [3, 4,
5, 8].

Mould for Sample Preparation

2.6 Fabrication of composite Hand lay-up technique was adopted in the preparation of unidirectional
composites. Clean the mold with shellac NC thinner solution. Apply a thin coating of poly-vinyl alcohol
on the interior tile surface and along the edges of the rubber sheet. Dry it for a day. Fill the mold with
required mass of fibers by spreading them as homogenously as possible. Take the required mass of
silicon carbide powder in a measuring jar. Pour small amounts of liquid polyester in the silicon carbide
powder jar and stir it thoroughly. Add catalyst to this paste using a syringe and stir it fast. Add
accelerator to this mix and stir it fast. Extreme caution should be taken in ensuring that the catalyst and
accelerator does not get into direct contact with each other. Else they both react chemically extremely
rapidly with issuing out fire. Immediately apply this paste on top of the fibers which are filled in the
mold, otherwise it would solidify rapidly in the measuring jar itself. To ensure that no air bubbles are
trapped inside, take a transparency sheet and cover it over the mold immediately by using rolling
operation. Place a tile on top covering the entire mold and its contents. Place sufficient weight (roughly
50 kg) on top of the mold and leave it undisturbed in a closed room for 1 day until the composite cures.
The specimens were also post cured at 70 °C for 8 h after removing from the mold. In the same above
process composites are also prepared by adding SiC (5%,10%) to resin and proper mixing were done
before poured on fibers. Table 1. Material composition of specimens Sample code Polyester Sisal fiber
silicon carbide (SiC) A 70 30 0 B 65 30 5 C 60 30 10 3.Mechanical & Thermal test results: 5.

References

[1] A.R.Prasad 2003, .XIII Nat. conf. ISME2003.

[2] Parmasivam, T and Abdulkalam, A.P.J., 1974 ,Fi. Sci. Tech; I ;8588.

[3] Satyanarayana, K. G., Sukumaran, K., Kulkarni, A. G., Pillai, S. G. K. and Rohatgi, P. K., 1986:17 ; 329-
33.

[4] Madhava, M. R., Suha Raman, Pavithran, C., Prasad, S.V. and Rohatgi, P. K., 1982. 2nd Nat. Symp. on
Ultrasonics, (New Delhi. U.S.I.)

[5] Fardons Mubark and Han Augustin, 1954. R &I ;29;108-113.

[6] Sefain, M. Z., Fedl, M. A. and Rakha, M. 1984; R &I ;29; 269- 272.