Physico-mechanical and wear properties of novel sustainable sour-weed fiber reinforced polyester composites

In this study, a novel natural fiber i.e. Sour-weed botanically known as ' Rumex acetosella ' has been first time introduced as natural reinforcements to polyester matrix. The natural fiber based polyester composites were fabricated by hand lay-up technique using different sizes and different weight percentages. In Sour-weed/Polyester composites, physical (density, water absorption and hardness), mechanical properties (tensile and impact properties) and wear properties (sand abrasion and sliding wear) were investigated for different sizes of sour weed of 0.6 mm, 5 mm, 10 mm, 15 mm and 20 mm at 3, 6 and 9 weight percent loading, respectively in polyester matrix. Furthermore, on average value of results, the multi-criteria optimization technique i.e. TOPSIS was employed to decide the ranking of the composites. From the optimized results, it was observed that Sour-weed composite reinforced with fiber's size of 15 mm at 6 wt% loading demonstrated the best ranked composite exhibiting best overall properties as average tensile strength of 34.33 MPa, average impact strength of 10 Joule, average hardness of 12 Hv, average specific sand abrasion wear rate of 0.0607 mm 3 N −1 m −1 , average specific sliding wear rate of 0.002 90 mm 3 N −1 m −1 , average percentage of water absorption of 3.446% and average density of 1.013 among all fabricated composites.