MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF HYBRID GLASS/PLYWOOD REINFORCED EPOXY COMPOSITES

Application of composite materials is increasing these days in areas like aircraft engineering to automobile industry, ships etc. because of their unique properties. Fiber Reinforced Plastics (FRP) is used a lot in aerospace industries these days. They possess advantages like light weight, low cost, simple maintenance and corrosion resistance. FRP requires unique strength design methods, testing procedures, etc. Glass fibers have very less Young's modulus, shear modulus and Poisson's ratio reducing its strength. Carbon fiber has very good mechanical properties but it's very costly. Therefore in this research work, plywood is used instead of carbon because of its low cost, easy availability and good compressive strength. Hardwood is used in ply. Composite is prepared by hand layup method and both tensile and compressive tests are conducted on Universal Testing Machine (UTM). From the tensile and compressive tests, the value of Ultimate tensile strength and Flexural compressive strength of the composite material is achieved. Young's modulus increased as compared to glass fiber reinforced polymeric composite.