| dc.description.abstract |
The global economy has gone through significant alterations in recent years, particularly
after Covid-19 epidemic, with an increasing importance on biodegradability, resource
effieacy, as well as environmental responsibility. Keeping that in mind, this study focuses
on developing composite materials with Epoxy resin as matrix material, natural fibers as
reinforcements and Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNT) as nanofiller. This present
study is intended to develop natural fiber and MWCNT reinforced epoxy composites with
a view to investigate their physical and mechanical properties, as well as to model the
mechanical properties using Finite Element Method (FEM). However, as there are lot of
different natural fibers with varying mechanical properties, this study has employed a fuzzy
Multi Criteria Decision Making method to select the best natural fibers among twelve
alternatives and found that the pineapple fiber and coir fiber are the top two candidates
among different fibers. Therefore, this study used pineapple, coir, and sisal fiber as natural
fiber reinforcements. Alkali treatment using sodium hydroxide (NaOH) was employed for
surface modification of natural fibers, enhancing their compatibility with the epoxy matrix.
Moreover, ultrasonication technique was used for achieving uniform dispersion of CNTs
within the epoxy matrix. Different physieal properties such as, density, void contents, and
water absorption, as well as some mechanical properties such as tensile strength, Young's
modulus, elongation at break, flexural strength, flexural modulus, Rockwell hardness
number and impact energy were measured. Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR)
spectroscopy was earried out to observe the change of molecular structure of the composites
because of the interaction among epoxy, natural fibers and MWCNT. Scanning Electron
Microscopic (SEM) images were analyzed to understand the microstructure of the
composites. Furthermore, Microstructure-Free Finite Element Model (MF-FEM) was
applied to simulate the mechanical behavior of the composites. Findings from the study
showed satisfactory improvement in most of the physical and mechanical properties with
addition of MWCNT up to a certain extent. However, addition of CNT resulted in increased
density and brittleness of the composites. |
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