Mechanical, tribological, thermal, and wettability performance of vinyl ester composites reinforced with ivy gourd short‑stem fiber and walnut shell‑derived activated biocarbon
摘要
Bio based materials are gaining interest in wide industrial sectors due to their lightweight, cost effective, easy degradable in nature. One such bio based material is polymer composite, which are having matrix and bio mass derived reinforcement material, numerous studies are underwent on this biocomposite material. The uniqueness of present study is to extraction of short fiber from ivy gourd stem and activated biocarbon from walnut shell, further the extracted short fiber is treated under alkali and vinyl silane solution, which improves the strength features. The composite are fabricated by hand layup method and testing are carried out by ASTM standard. The study result reported that composite C5 with 4 vol% of activated biocarbon, and 40 vol% of alkali silane modified short fiber shows improved tensile, flexural behavior, and impact energy of 148 MPa, 188 MPa, and 6.6 J respectively. Moreover, with increasing filler concentration of 8 vol% these mechanical features shows reduced strength features. However, the composite C6 at this 8 vol% of activated biocarbon shows enhanced hardness, thermal conductivity, contact angle behavior of 92 shore-d, 0.473 W/m-K, and 98° respectively. Similarly, the wear resistance features of the composite C6 are enhanced by providing reduced mass loss and coefficient of friction of 0.57 g and 0.25 when 8 vol% of fillers are reinforced along with fiber matrix. Thus, the study shows the composite with reinforcement of short fiber from ivy gourd stem and activated biocarbon from walnut shell are not only eco-friendly but also provide high strength properties, which could be applied in areas where better wear resistance, heat insulating, hydrophobic, and mechanical load bearing capacity are required.