Characterization of Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composite Prepared by Hand Layup Method

In this work, glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites were fabricated. Epoxy resin was used as polymer matrix material and glass fiber was used as reinforcing material. The main focus of this work was to fabricate this composite material by the cheapest and easiest way. For this, hand layup method was used to fabricate glass fiber reinforced epoxy resin composites and TiO 2 material was used as filler material. Six types of compositions were made with and without filler material keeping the glass fiber constant and changing the epoxy resin with respect to filler material addition. Mechanical properties such as tensile, impact, hardness, compression and flexural properties were investigated. Additionally, microscopic analysis was done. The experimental investigations show that without filler material the composites exhibit overall lower value in mechanical properties than with addition of filler material in the composites. The results also show that addition of filler material increases the mechanical properties but highest values were obtained for different filler material addition. From the obtained results, it was observed that composites filled by 15wt% of TiO 2 particulate exhibited maximum tensile strength, 20wt% of TiO 2 particulate exhibited maximum impact strength, 25wt% of TiO 2 particulate exhibited maximum hardness value, 25wt% of TiO 2 particulate exhibited maximum compressive strength, 20wt% of TiO 2 particulate exhibited maximum flexural strength.