Article Sidebar
Published:
Jan 28, 2012Keywords:
Article Details
Copyright belongs to the Faculty of Engineering, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria
The contents of the articles are the sole opinion of the author(s) and not of NIJOTECH.
NIJOTECH allows open access for distribution of the published articles in any media so long as whole (not part) of articles are distributed.
A copyright and statement of originality documents will need to be filled out clearly and signed prior to publication of an accepted article. The Copyright form can be downloaded from https://www.nijotech.com/downloads/COPYRIGHT%20FORM.pdf while the Statement of Originality is in Statement of Originality.pdf (nijotech.com)
For articles that were developed from funded research, a clear acknowledgement of such support should be mentioned in the article with relevant references. Authors are expected to provide complete information on the sponsorship and intellectual property rights of the article together with all exceptions.
It is forbidden to publish the same research report in more than one journal.
Main Article Content
Factors That Improve the Impact Responses of Ukam Plant Fibre Reinforced Composite
Abstract
Natural fibres around us have mechanical properties capable of making them compete effectively with synthetic fibres in the development of fibre reinforced composites. Synthetic fibres (such as glass fibres) and resins (such as polyester resin) have long been used in the development of structural components for car bodies, boat buildings, house and aircraft constructions. This project is concerned with the preparation of cashew nut shell liquid resin (natural resin) and the collection of Ukam plant fibres (natural fibres) and using them in the development of fibre reinforced plastic composites. Factors that improve their impact responses were considered in the development processes. These are fibre volume fractions, fibre treatment, fibre length, fibre orientation and the application of additives. Fifty different test specimens which involved the synthetic and the natural composites were developed using the hand lay-up method. The specimens were subjected to pendulum or notched Izod impact tests using ASTM D256 impact testing machine. The results of the impact tests show that: (1) Natural composites can withstand impact strengths like the synthetic ones, (2) Impact response of composites improves when the five factors indicated above are taken into consideration in composite development. Among these factors, the introduction of 20% by resin weight of additives yielded the best impact response for both natural and synthetic composites. For example at 40% fibre volume fraction, the natural composite test sample with additives developed an impact response of 86.4kJm-2 against 78.9kJm-2 impact response of the natural composite test sample without additives. This optimum impact response improvement was also observed with synthetic composite test samples with values of 96.5kJm-2 and 94.8kJm-2 for samples with additives and without additives respectively. From these results, it is obvious that structural components such as car bumpers could be developed from natural composites
