Study of hardness and flexural strength of banyan and peepal fibre reinforced hybrid composites

In the present work, Banyan and Peepal fibre reinforced hybrid composites are prepared through hand Lay- up technique..The objective of the work is to investigate the hardness and flexural properties of eight varieties of banyan – peepal hybrid composites. The composites include banyan-peepal-banyan-peepal-banyan fibre composite, peepal-banyan-peepal-banyan-peepal fibre composite, banyan-copper-banyan-copper-banyan fibre composite (F1-Cu-F1-Cu-F1), peepal-copper-peepal-copper-peepal fibre composite, banyan-peepal-copper-peepal-banyan fibre composite, peepal-copper-banyan-copper-peepal fibre composite, peepal-banyan-copper-banyan-peepal fibre composite, and banyan-copper-peepal-copper-banyan fibre composite . Each of these composites is prepared in 00 orientations (i.e., fibres parallel each other), 450 (i.e., fibres at 450 to each other) and 900 orientations (i.e., fibres perpendicular to each other). It is observed from the results that, the hardness of F2-Cu-F1-Cu-F2 composite with 900 orientation is high and that of F1-F2-F1-F2-F1 composite with 450 orientation is low. It is also noticed that, the bending strength of F2-Cu-F1-Cu-F2 composite with 00 orientation is high and that of F2-F1-F2-F1-F2 composite with 450 orientation is low, and as far as the composites with 90⁰ orientations are considered, no results are obtained. Further it is noticed that, the hardness of all the eight composites with 90˚ orientation is found to be high compared to their remaining orientations and also the hardness of all the composites with 45˚ orientation is low compared to their 0˚ and 90˚ orientations