Study on Tensile and Hardness behavior of Sawdust Impregnated on Short Coir Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite

Modern technology requires materials with distinctive combination of properties that is not possible to meet the requirements by conventional metal alloys, ceramics, and polymer materials. Synthetic fibers such as E-glass, carbon fibers are widely used due to their high stiffness and weight to strength ratio. These had a proclivity to reduce due to high cost and increased environmental awareness which have diverged attention toward organic/natural fibers composite adding advantages such as low cost, ease in availability, low density, enhanced energy recovery, co2 neutrality, biodegradability, and satisfactory mechanical properties as well. In this study, short coir fibers reinforced polymer composites were developed by hand layup with varying percentage of matrix (85, 80, 75, and 70%) and sawdust filler (0, 5, 10, and 15%) by weight. The developed composites were tested for tensile and hardness property as per ASTM standards. The results showed an increase in tensile property by 12.75% with addition of filler and with further increase in filler percentage, tensile property dropped by higher percentage. Hardness property increased by 17.25% with an increase in filler percentage as sawdust led to an increase in matrix surface resistance toward indentation. Microstructure analysis was carried out to study specimen surface morphology. The results show that tensile property and hardness are greatly influenced by incorporating the percentage by weight fraction of filler and suggest that coir reinforced polymer matrix composite impregnated with sawdust filler has much structural and non-structural application