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Evaluation of Mechanical Properties of Natural Fiber Reinforced Melamine Urea Formaldehyde (MUF) Resin Composites

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.matpr.2017.11.335

2214-7853

Ayamannil Sajeeb, C. Sajith Babu, Mohammed Arif,

Electrospun Nanofibers in Biomedical Applications

Natural fibers have lot of merits over other established materials as reinforcement which recently attracted the attention of researchers. They are environmentally-friendly, fully biodegradable, abundantly available, easily accessible, non-toxic, non-abrasive, renewable, cheap, and have low density. In this project, five kinds of composites were developed by using different combinations of resins and fibers by hand lay- up process. The Melamine Urea Formaldehyde resin (MUF) and polyester resin are used as the binding agents. Khadi, coconut leaf midrib (CLM) and glass fibers are used as reinforcing materials for developing the composites. Later, mechanical properties like elastic modulus and impact strength of the developed composites are evaluated by using static bending and impact tests. The results show that the Young’s modulus and specific modulus of composites prepared from MUF resin is greater than that of composites prepared from polyester resin. Among the five composites Khadi-CLM hybrid with MUF shows highest specific modulus. MUF shows fairly good properties with natural fibers as well as with artificial fibers. On the other hand polyester resin shows its apex result only with artificial fiber (Glass), this may be due to the good binding property of MUF resin with natural fibers.