Publication: Effects of various manufacturing methods on mechanical properties of flax fiber reinforced epoxy composite
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Date
2024-08-01
Authors
Nur Hasya Binti Mohd Zailani
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Abstract
This study is about comparing the mechanical properties of natural composites using a variety of manufacturing methods. The natural fiber is a kind of composite that consists of natural resources such as plants, animals and mineral resources. The selection of manufacturing methods can affect their mechanical properties as it controls the thickness of composites. The natural thread thickness and thread fraction (FVF) play an important role in determining composite quality in terms of surface dampening and mechanical properties. The objective of this research was to produce epoxy reinforced flax compounds using wet hand layout (WH) and resin infusion (RI) methods with single vacuum bag (SB) and double vacuum bags (DB), to study the effects of manufacturing methods against the most effective to generate epoxide reinforced flax with desired properties. EpoxAmite 100 is selected as a matrix resin, and the Epoxy Curative Hardener 102 is used as the matrix hardener. Prior to the manufacturing process, flaks are produced using the WH+SB, RI +SB & RI +DB method. Five samples have been cut to perform stress, flexibility and cracking tests based on ASTM D3039, D7079, D5045 respectively. The findings of this study show that DB has the lowest thickness compared to other materials which makes it have better compression. From the results, it was proven that the manufacturing method for DB had the highest UTS and FFRC voltage modules compared to other manufacturing techniques. For UFS, the result showed WH had the lowest value due to imperfections in applying the matrix to the thread during manufacture, the sliding module showed the same pattern as the UFS where WH was lowest compared to others because of imperfection in the thread layout and space that could lead to weak areas in the material. In conclusion, in comparison with other methods, it shows that DB is the most effective in producing FFRCs because it produces the highest UTS and K1C.