Fatigue characterization of sisal fiber reinforced composites using experimental and finite element method

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the fatigue behavior of sisal fiber reinforced with carbon nanotubes. The hand lay-up technique is used to prepare the composite material samples. The fatigue response of pure polymer matrix, composite material which is prepared by reinforcing a sisal fiber reinforced with a polymer matrix was studied. The effectiveness of nano reinforcement of fatigue response is identified from experiments. Later, the fatigue response of sisal and nano particle reinforced sisal fiber composites (hybrid composite) is identified with irregularities by using finite element based software ANSYS. The elastic properties of sisal fiber reinforced composite and carbon nanotube reinforced composite is estimated by using the principles of Micromechanics and Macro-mechanics. The failure mechanism of polymer, conventional sisal fiber composites and nano filled sisal fiber reinforced composites are identified. The effect of the shape of the irregularities on the fatigue response is also identified from ANSYS software. From the present work, it is observed that, the reinforcement of nano reinforcement has considerable influence on the fatigue response of the resulting composite.