Synthesis and Mechanical Properties of Short Sisal Fibre Dispersed Epoxy Composites

Today scientist and engineers working on materials are very much concerned with environment protection and sustainability issues. Due to several properties like environmental friendly, bio degradable and sustainable, natural fiber composites are potential candidate for advance engineering applications. Now day’s natural fibres are widely used to replace the conventional synthetic fibers. In present investigation an Epoxy piece and short Sisal fiber-epoxy composites are prepared using hand lay-up technique. For this purpose, an open type mould made of mild steel plate has been used. Composite E is for neat epoxy and S5, S10, S15, & S20 are composites with sisal fibers of length 5mm, 10mm, 15mm & 20mm respectively. Sisal fibres length varied from 5mm to 20mm. It is revealed that the sisal epoxy composite exhibited better impact strength and flexural strength. Tensile strength decreased with the dispersion of short fibres, but with the increase in the length of sisal fibres tensile strength also slightly improved.

Keywords: Composites; Sisal fibres; epoxy; mechanical properties.