Mechanical behaviour of polymeric composition based on available natural fibres in Australia

Increasing pressure from environmental groups and the wide use of the composites have encouraged the researchers to use renewable resources reinforcements. This project investigates the usage of available bagasse fibre reinforced vinyl ester composites. Tensile and thermal properties of the developed composites were studied. Two types of post curing techniques were employed as conventional oven and microwave oven. Optical microscope was used to analyse the surface characteristics such as the level of adhesion between the fibres and the resin. Different volume fractions from 5% of fibre wt to 25% of wt are used in this study to find the optimum. The results of current work revealed that the 15% wt fraction has highest young’s modulus in both conventional and microwave wave cases which is 3700MPa and 3400MPa respectively. And also the tensile strength for the conventional oven case looks similar for 5-15 % wt fractions which is around 24-26MPa, where as in microwave case 25% wt fractions has highest strength which is around 35MPa