Development of natural fiber reinforced polymer composites with enhanced mechanical and thermal properties for automotive industry application

In this research, a newly explored natural fiber named sea purslane fiber (SP) was applied as a reinforcing material with widely used thermosetting polymer epoxy polymer. Chemical treatments on the fibers were done with NaOH followed by acrylic acid treatment. Reinforcing acrylic acid treated and untreated SP fibers at variable weight percentages of fiber loading, variety of composite samples (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 wt%) were developed. The mechanical characteristics of the composites were found to improve initially with increasing filler content until reaching the optimum (20 wt%) fiber loading, after which they began to fall. At 20 wt% filler loading various properties like physical & chemical (density, water absorption, X‐ray diffraction), mechanical (tensile, flexural, impact, micro‐hardness) and thermal (thermogravimetric analysis) properties were examined and compared with untreated fiber reinforced composites. It was noticed that the treated fiber composites reveal better result as compared with untreated fibers composites. The findings provide manufacturers and engineers with a broad concept of how to use this composite to reduce weight, particularly in automotive applications.