Mechanical properties of burmese silk orchid fiber reinforced epoxy composites

In recent days, use of fiber reinforced polymer composites is growing rapidly due to their better mechanical properties like tensile strength, flexural strength, and impact strength; and also due to their low cost and low density. In the present work, Burmese silk orchid fibers are used as reinforcement and epoxy as matrix material to fabricate the composite material. Using hand-layup technique, composite specimens were prepared by increasing the weight of the fibers as 5, 10, 15, and 20 grams. Test specimens are cut as per the ASTM standards. Tensile strength, flexural strengths are determined using Instran Universal Testing Machine and impact strength of the samples is measured using Izod impact testing machine. Experimental results are validated. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.