Optimization of Desert Date Particles Reinforced Composite for Vehicular Instrument Panel

Finding suitable material for a certain application in engineering is an essential task at early state of the product development. To achieve this, various materials selection methods have been developed. This study adopted the use of computational method in evaluating the material properties which is quite easy and bereft of complex mathematics, as against experimental techniques of trial and error characterized by time consuming effort and cost. Appropriate volume fraction (Vf) of randomly distributed reinforcing agents (Desert date particles) in polypropylene resin that gave suitable candidate properties at a minimum deviation errors were computed using classical method (weighted sum) in simulink MATLAB environment. The composite produced was found suitable to replace the synthetic particles reinforce composites used for vehicular Instrument panel which are relatively heavy, expensive, emits bad odor when exposed to heat energy, not biodegradable and pose risk to health during processing. The optimum value of volume fraction 19% was used to prepare and produced two samples-212 ????m (sample B) and 300 ????m (sample E) sizes using compression molding technique.