Physical and Mechanical Characteristics of the Jute Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composites

Fiber-reinforced polymer composites have played a dominant role for a long time in a variety of applications for their high specific strength and modulus. The fiber which serves as a reinforcement in reinforced plastics may be synthetic or natural. Past studies show that only synthetic fibers such as glass, carbon etc., have been used in fiber-reinforced plastics. Although glass and other synthetic fiber-reinforced plastics possess high specific strength, their fields of application are very limited because of their inherent higher cost of production. In this connection, an investigation has been carried out to make use of jute, a natural fiber abundantly available in India. Natural fibers are not only strong and lightweight but also relatively very cheap. The present work describes the development and characterization of a new set of natural fiber based polymer composites consisting of jute as reinforcement and epoxy resin. The newly developed composites are characterized with respect to their physical and mechanical characteristics. Experiments are carried out to study the effect of fiber loading on physical and mechanical behavior of these epoxy based polymer composites. This work also includes the comparison of elastic properties of composites using micromechanical models with experimental and existing analytical formulations like rule of mixture, Halpin-Tsai, and Lewis and Nielsen models that are used extensively in material modeling.