Effect of plant-based fillers on the mechanical, thermal, water absorption and morphological properties of hybrid composites

Incorporation of filler materials in polymer composites have gained due to their superior qualities such as improved properties. The objective of the work is to study the effect of plant-based fillers, such as Rice Husk (RH), Wheat Husk (WH), and Wood Dust (WD) on the mechanical and morphological properties of Jute(J)/Glass(G)/Epoxy composites. Five layers with same stacking sequence of G/J/G/J/G were occupied in the sample. Fiber and matrix ratio were maintained as 30/70 (wt.%). Three different (1%, 3%, and 5%) wt.% of natural fillers were incorporated to investigate the effects on characterization of ten different samples (RH1, RH3, RH5, WH1, WH3, WH5, WD1, WD3, WD5, and NF). In case of mechanical characterization, WH3 exhibited the highest tensile strength of 70.25 MPa, RH3 showed the best result with the value of flexural strength of 160.04 MPa, WD3 showed strongest impact resistance, measuring at 12.293 J/cm 2 , and RH5 provided better hardness of 76 HRB. In case of thermal characterization, WH3 sample losses its weight considerably in a faster than other samples, the maximum decompositions rate has been recorded at the temperature of 443 °C for the WD5 sample, and WD5 showed the best exothermic phenomenon. In FT-IR analysis, it was found that the RH5 sample showed less transmittance than all other samples. All WH samples provided better water absorption capability than others. SEM analysis showed that the fiber diameter was found around 20 µm and showed that filler materials were dispersed though some voids are observed due to agglomeration of the particles.