%0 Journal Article
%T Development of Glass/Jute Fibers Reinforced Polyester Composite
%A Amit Bindal
%A Satnam Singh
%A N. K. Batra
%A Rajesh Khanna
%J Indian Journal of Materials Science
%D 2013
%R 10.1155/2013/675264
%X Composites play significant role as engineering material and their use has been increasing day by day due to their specific properties such as high strength to weight ratios, high modulus to weight ratio, corrosion resistance, and wear resistance. In present work, an attempt is made to hybridize the material using synthetic (glass) as well as natural fibres (chemically treated jute), such that to reduce the overall use of synthetic reinforcement, to reduce the overall cost, and to enhance the mechanical properties. All composite specimens with different weight percentages of fibres were manufactured using hand lay-up process and testing was done by using ASTM standards. Experimental results revealed that hybridization of composite with natural and synthetic fibres shows enhanced tensile strength, flexural strength, and impact strength. The content of natural reinforcement was found to be in the range of 25¨C33.3% for best results. The effect of treated jute on flexural properties was more than that on tensile properties, which was due to greater stiffness of jute fibers. Chemical treatment of jute fibers lowers the water absorption and results were comparable to glass fiber reinforced polyester composites. The addition of jute also reduced the overall cost by 22.18%. 1. Introduction The advancement in the field of material science led to many new and advanced materials. Composites are one of them, which are adopted in various engineering applications. Many authors [1¨C3] stated many properties of polymer reinforced plastics which makes them suitable for a variety of applications such as aerospace structures, automotive parts, and marine structures. The extensive use of composites in these industries is due to their combined properties of resilience, creep resistance, high strength and stiffness to weight ratios, corrosion resistance, and good damping properties. The study [4] showed that the use of natural fibre as reinforcement had increased many folds in recent years due to new environmental rules and customer demands. The increased demand of natural fibre is due to their low cost, low density, biodegradability, renewability, and abundance. The findings of this study [5] showed that the use of natural fibre can be enhanced by proper chemical treatment of fibres which produces better mechanical properties than untreated fibres. The properties of hybrid composites were studied by many researchers [6¨C8] and they concluded that hybrid composite offers greater resistance to water absorption, cost saving, weight saving, and increased properties. In present
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijms/2013/675264/