Investigation of Mechanical Behaviour of Basalt-Banana Hybrid Composites

Natural fibre reinforced composites are replacing conventional materials as natural fibres are cheap, biodegradable, and non abrasive. They have high specific properties and low density. The natural fibre composites offer specific properties compared to conventional fibre composites. In this paper, hybrid composites are fabricated with basalt and banana fibre as reinforcement materials with epoxy resin as matrix. The hand layup process is used for fabricating the composite. The objective of this paper is to estimate tensile strength, flexural strength, impact strength and hardness of hybrid composites. The result of the investigation shows that the tensile strength and flexural strength of hybrid composites are superior to mono fibre composites. Morphological analyses are also done to study the internal structure of the tested specimens in which fibre twist fracture and fibre pull out are observed.