6.1. Impact of banana fibre on epoxy composites
Epoxy resin is one ofthe commercially importantthermosetting
polymer and is widely used as matrix for fibre-reinforced composite
materials and as structural adhesives. They are amorphous,
highly cross-linked polymers formed from reaction of an epoxide
resin termed as oxirane or ethoxyline group with polyamine
hardener. Epoxy resins with fibres reinforcement results in better
mechanical properties such as increased tensile and flexural
strength, high thermal resistance and very good chemical resistance
[57–59]. Fig. 6 shows the banana fibre reinforced epoxy
composites. The mechanical characteristics of banana fibre composites
with differentmatric system(tensile andflexural properties
and impact strength) are shown in Table 5 [3,51,58]. The tensile
strength and tensile modulus of banana fibre composites with
epoxy, PLA and polyester resin system is shown in Fig. 7(a) and (b).
The work done by earlier researcher [60] reported that tensile
strength of banana fibre epoxy composites varied from 44
to 50 MPa with 1.49 GPa tensile modulus. The other researcher
reported high flexural modulus (8.92 GPa) and impact strength
(13 kJ/m2) of banana fibre composite [51]. The recent research
revealed that with 40% fibre volume fraction with epoxy system
resulted a tensile strength 78 MPa, flexural strength 84 MPa and
impact energy 40 k J/m2 [40]. This is due to the transmission and
distribution of the applied stress from epoxy to the banana fibre
Fig. 6. Banana fibres reinforced epoxy composites.
resulting in higher strength, where in the composite can sustain
higher load compared to the virgin epoxy resin.