Comparative study on the enhancement of thermo-mechanical properties of carbon fiber and glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites

Abstract

This work is the part of a study on the enhancement of thermo-mechanical properties of Epoxy by incorporating carbon and glass fiber and preparing epoxy composites and are rarely used before. The composite/laminates of Carbon fiber/Epoxy (CFE) and Glass fiber/Epoxy (GFE) having 1.5 mm thickness were prepared by hand layup vacuum bagging technique. The fiber-epoxy ratios for preparation of CFE and GFE were 40:60, 50:50 and 60:40 by weight percent. Thermal properties of the composites were investigated using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), while mechanical properties were examined using Universal testing machine (UTM) in terms of tensile strength and Young's modulus. The tensile strength of CFE were enhanced to 844.44%, 951.11% and 1122.22% by incorporation of carbon fiber having 40, 50 and 60 wt%, respectively. While the increase of 156.66%, 171.10% and 197.77% in tensile strength of GFE was noticed when 40, 50 and 60 wt% of glass fiber was incorporated. The glass transition temperature (Tg) increased from 71 °C of neat epoxy to 110 °C for both the epoxy composites. Overall, the properties of CFE were found to be much superior to that of GFE.