Studies on Design and Fabrication of Polymer Based Composite Materials with Fish Scale Reinforcement

Globally, around 80,000 metallic and non-metallic materials have been developed by scientists, engineers and technologists.However, various properties required for suitable applications need to explore newer materials.Composite materials have been developed based on this requirement.Natural fibers include vegetable, mineral and animal fibers.In India, the large number of natural fibers is not utilized properly.In India, fish production 95.7 lakhs of tonnes out of which 7.34 lakhs of tonnes of fish scale is produced every year but unutilized.In the present work, an attempt has been made to design, develop and explore the possibility of utilization of fish scale in the form of flakes or short fibers in polymer composites.This bio-waste is used for fabrication of LAPOX L12 resin based composites.The fabrication setup for composite materials has been developed and fabricated for hand layup technique.Composites with different orientations have been fabricated.Several useful conclusions have been arrived at.