Compressive and Shear Strength of Kevlar based Nano Composites

The Fibre Reinforced Composite (FRC) material consists of building materials in macroscopic level by having fibres and resin as reinforcement and matrix material respectively. It has different physical and chemical properties that were bonded together in order to get new material with different required characteristics from individual components. The properties of the composites are largely depending on the matrix and reinforcement materials. The matrix strengthening process by introduction of fine nano particles in composite laminate was done in this work. In order to study the effect of nano particles, the composite consists of Kevlar- 49 (K49) fibre in woven form with epoxy resin as matrix was considered. All the test specimens have been prepared with 12 layers of K49 to build 3mm thickness using vacuum bag moulding method. The K49 fibre in form of plain-woven type were chosen as reinforcement material. The nano fillers such as Titanium dioxide (TiO2), Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) and Graphite powder (Gr) were used as nanomaterial added in the matrix and was compared with pure K49 reinforced composites for better performance. The TiO2, CaCO3 and GR nano fillers were constituted on various weight ratios in FRC. The structural properties like compression and shear strengths were determined as per ASTM standards. The fracture behaviour for all the categories of laminate has been detailed and reported using scanning electron microscope.