AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE SCRATCH CHARACTERISTICS OF BAMBOO FIBRE-REINFORCED EPDXY COMPOSITE

Bamboo fibre has been used as reinforcement in epoxy. The influence of bamboo fibres orientation on the scratch characteristics has been studied by single pass scratching action and evaluated in terms of scratch force and scratch hardness. The composites are prepared for three different fibre orientations, longitudinal, transverse and 10 mm random. Five values of applied load (2 N, 5 N, 10N, 12 N, 15 N) and two scratching speeds (5.6 mm s(-1), 11.2 mm s(-1)) are considered. The results revealed that the introduction of bamboo fibres tends to increase the scratch force for all composites considered except for longitudinal orientated fibre composite. The scratch hardness shows improvement when bamboo fibre is introduced, except for the longitudinal case. The best result for scratch hardness is exhibited by transversely orientated bamboo fibre reinforced epoxy corresponding to 35 % improvement.