Fabrication and Analysis of Coconut Coir Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite with Cement as Filler

Abstract

Over the past two Decades there has been many researches on coir fiber based composites and hybrid materials and further researches are being carried out on the same as coir is found to a replacement for many syntactic fibers as it abundantly available in nature, specially in India and Asian countries, research on different materials as fillers in coir fiber composites for different purposes such as Roofing tiles, Epoxy flooring, Helmet shells etc are being Carried. The present work is a small effort on testing Portland cement as filler material in the Coir/Epoxy composite and finding out whether the fabricated composite can be a suitable material for preparation of Safety helmet. Different combinations of coir and cement is taken in constant epoxy content and are tested for different mechanical properties such as Tensile strength, Impact Strength and Shore Hardness and it can be said that cement as filler has significant effect on the above mechanical properties of a coir/epoxy composite.