Investigation of Fracture Toughness of Bidirectional Jute / Epoxy Composite and Analysis by using FEA

Since past few years, the use of natural fibers as reinforcement in polymers has increased drastically. These natural fibers are strong, light as well as biodegradable. In this research work, an investigation has been carried out to make use of jute fiber, a natural fiber abundantly available in India. This present work is based on the development of a new composite involving woven jute fiber sheet as reinforcement and epoxy resin as matrix material. This composite is developed by hand lay-up technique and jute-epoxy layers are aligned so as to get the best mechanical properties. Experiments are carried out to find fracture parameters like fracture toughness and stress intensity factor of jute/epoxy composite. Then Analysis of the same specimens is done using ANSYS. In this work, effort has been to find the fracture toughness of jute fiber reinforced epoxy composite. For this purpose six woven jute/epoxy SNEB test specimens are prepared and three-point bend test is performed on them individually and results are drawn. Then the analysis result is compared with experimental results. The computational results show a good agreement with the experiments