Development of composites and assessing the durability and acceptability of the composites in saline water

Composites began to be used more and more in every day commodities like bath tubs, railings, electrical goods, sports equipment, aerospace and ship industry. Now their applications have enhanced says Tang et al. (1997). The greatest advantage of composite materials is their strength and stiffness combined with lightness. By choosing an appropriate combination of reinforcement and matrix material, manufactures can produce properties that exactly fit the requirements for a particular structure and for a particular purpose. Due to the relatively high cost of synthetic fibres such as glass, plastic, carbon and Kevlar used in fibre reinforced composites and the health hazards of asbestos fibre, it becomes necessary to explore natural fibres says Hovroelas (2000). From above information the investigator felt the need to replace glass fibre and selected jute, coir and banana which are locally available, low cost and ease of manufacture. The materials selected for the development of composites were nonwovens made of jute, coir and banana (first, second and third samples), jute coir, coir banana and jute banana (fourth, fifth and sixth samples) and the combination of jute, coir, banana (seventh sample). The selected resins were epoxy resin, accelerator and catalyst (100: 20: 10) for preparing the matrix material. Since jute, coir and banana fibres are very stiff in nature, eco-friendly and less cost, they were selected and converted into nonwoven with the help of needle punching process and was used by the investigator to prepare a composites following the Hand lay-up techniques and assessed the durability and acceptability of composites in saline water.