Mechanical Characterization of Date Palm Rachis Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite

Abstract

Nowadays more and more research is being carried out to find new environment-friendly, biodegradable, and sustainable materials. These researches include investigating environment-friendly materials like natural composite materials, hybrid composite materials, and other sustainable hybrid materials. Continuous research is being carried out to find alternative reinforcement and matrix systems that can match the performance of the existing system and is more environment-friendly. An epoxy-based composite material was prepared and reinforced with Date Palm rachis fiber using the hand lay-up method. The tensile strength, flexural strength, and impact strength were investigated in this work. The flexural strength was investigated using the three-point bending method and the material had an average flexural strength of 43.242 MPa. The impact test was carried out on two types of specimens with the fibers laid up across the length of the specimen and the width of the specimens. The specimens with fibers laying across the length of the specimens had an impact strength of 224.95 kJ/m2 and the specimens with fibers laying across the width of the specimens had an impact strength of 127.26 kJ/m2. The tensile strength of the material was investigated using a Universal Testing Machine and the material had an average tensile strength of 42.11 MPa.