EFFECT OF HYGROTHERMAL AGEING ON THE HARDNESS AND DRILLING TIME OF NATURAL FIBER COMPOSITE MATERIAL

Natural fiber composite (NFC) materials are those composites, which uses cellulose fiber as the reinforcing fiber material. Abundant research is in process to determine the physical and mechanical properties of NFC materials and this paper concentrates on investigating the effect of hygrothermal ageing on the hardness and drilling time of a commercially available wood-plastic composite material. The simultaneous effect of water absorption along with the action of temperature (hygrothermal ageing) affects the mechanical and physical properties of the fiber-reinforced composites (FRC). Various research has proved that such an effect on FRCs reduces its mechanical strength by significant amount. In this experimental work, a commercially available wood-plastic NFC has been used, which claims to be water resistant and has been tested for the hygrothermal effect over a period of 21 days. The method used in the experiment to induce the artificial hygrothermal ageing effect is cold soaking, wherein the sample materials were soaked in water at ambient temperature. The experiment proved that there exists a hygrothermal ageing effect on the selected material, even though it promises to be 100% water resistant. The experiment result showed that the hardness of the material reduced by 18.90% and also the drilling time reduced by 17.36% due to the increase in the softness of the material due to the said effect, apart from the change in dimensions observed in terms of length, breadth and thickness.