Tensile and Hardness Properties of Sheep Wool Fiber Reinforced Polyester Composite

摘要

Modern industries are looking for a replacement of existing materials with a lightweight polymer-based reinforced material. In general, the polymer materials are reinforced with natural fiber, animal fiber, and wood fiber. This work deals with the importance of animal fiber in making a composite. The most widely used polyester resin is used as matrix materials and uniform sized (10-20mm) sheep wool fiber is used as reinforcement materials for making sheep wool reinforced composite. The random orientation of fibers was adopted for three different weight percentage (wt%) as 20%, 30%, and 40%. All the different weight fraction of composites is developed by using a compression molding technique. The compression mold ejected material is sized as per the ASTM standards for various tests. The tensile properties and hardness of the composite is determined experimentally. Scanning Electron Microscope image is taken to analysis the interfacial properties, internal structure and cracks of the fabricated composite.