Fabrication and Mechanical Characterization of Epoxy-Based S-Glass/Kevlar Fiber Reinforced Hybrid Composites Filled with Graphite Powder

Abstract

The current research aims to develop epoxy-based S-Glass/Kevlar fiber reinforced hybrid composites filled with graphite powder. Hybrid composite are fabricated by hand layup method and mechanical characterization is carried out as per the ASTM standards. It is observed that 10% of graphite powder filled epoxy is effectively reduced the weight of the composites in comparison with non filled hybrid composites. On filler addition, the impact strength of the composite shows maximum at 5% of filler and tends to decrease further. The tensile capacity of the composites are increased by 23% and 13.6% and the flexural strength increased by 4.5% and 4.12% when 5% and 10% of filler added to composites, respectively compared to S-glass/Kevlar/epoxy composites. The present research aims to process and characterize the hybrid composites based on S-glass based hybrid fiber with Kevlar fiber and epoxy resin for thermal and mechanical properties incorporation of solid graphite powder. Many polymer based composites have glass transition temperature in the range of 100–240 °C, so that they are said to possess good thermal stability. This paper presents an effort undertaken to understand the effect of glassy fiber addition to composite systems on thermal conductivity of composites. The densified composites show improvement in fracture toughness and tensile strength at the cost of toughness.