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C OM M E N T A R Y

Effect of Fiber Orientation on Mechanical and Tribological Properties of Banana-Reinforced Composites Paul Joel Chavali

. Ganga Bhavani Taru

Submitted: 17 June 2020 / in revised form: 3 October 2020  ASM International 2020

Abstract The day-by-day usage of natural fibers is increasing in all industrial and non-industrial applications because of their availability and easy manufacturing. Based on this demand of natural fibers for the past few decades, most of the researchers are working on the development of various natural fiber-reinforced composites. In the present research work, the mechanical and tribological properties of a developed banana fiber-reinforced composite with various orientations have been investigated. Initially the composite is made up by hand layup process in the 10:1 weight ratio of resin and hardener. Later these composites are cut according to the ASTM standards, and mechanical and tribological properties of different fiber orientations which are 0, 15, 45, 75 and 90 are tested. Finally, a morphological analysis is conducted at the fractured surfaces to understand the type of the failure that has occurred for all the orientations. Keywords Natural fiber composites  Banana fiber  Epoxy resin  Tensile strength  Wear test

Introduction With the advent of technology, future world is looking for very light weight materials in certain applications like satellites, aerospace, automotive, marine, etc. Then composites which gave opportunity for the usage of very lightweight materials have been introduced. Composites are materials which consist of two or more different P. J. Chavali (&)  G. B. Taru Department of Mechanical Engineering, VFSTR, Vadlamudi, India e-mail: [email protected]

materials in such a way that it produces a material whose properties differ from constituent materials and are of superior quality. A composite consists of two constituents, one of the constituent acts as reinforcement which mainly carries the load and other acts as a matrix which holds the fibers together and distribute the load. The reinforcements that are used in composites are fibers, particulate, flake, whiskers, and matrix materials that are used are polymers, metals, ceramics, carbon, etc. The fibers can be divided into natural and synthetic fibers. Synthetic fibers are nonbiodegradable which causes major ecological and environmental effects. Thus, their usage is limited to certain areas which gave path to get the use of natural fibers as they are naturally available and are biodegradable, thereby eco-friendly and recyclable. Also, natural fibers are abundant in nature, easily available and they are of low cost, density, weight, etc. Because of these advantages, they are finding applications in automobiles, mirror casing, helmets, etc. Sathish Kumar et al. [1] stated that natural fiber composites have many unique properties where they are characterized with different types of chemical treatments and showed that chemically treated fibers which remove moisture enhance the bond bet