Evaluation of mechanical properties of banana and sisal fiber reinforced epoxy composites: Influence of glass fiber hybridization

• Effect of glass fiber hybridization on randomly oriented natural fibers is studied.
• Nine different kinds of stacking sequence laminates are prepared.
• Tensile, flexural and impact properties are evaluated for hybrid composites.
• SEM is utilized to study micro structural behavior of the tested specimen.

In this work, the effect of glass fiber hybridization with the randomly oriented natural fibers has been analyzed. The banana (B), sisal (S) fibers were chopped and woven E-glass (G) synthetic fibers were reinforced with epoxy matrix. Nine different kinds of laminates were prepared in the following stacking sequence of B, S, BS, G/B/G, G/S/G, G/BS/G, G/B/G/B/G, G/S/G/S/G and G/BS/G/BS/G. Mechanical properties like tensile strength, flexural strength and impact strength were evaluated and compared. Interfacial analysis was also carried out with the help of Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) to study the micro structural behavior of the tested specimen. It was observed that the addition of two and three layer of glass fiber can improve the tensile strength by a factor of 2.34 and 4.13 respectively. The flexural properties were enhanced on banana–sisal fiber with two layers of glass fibers rather than three layers and the laminate with sisal and three glass ply offers better impact strength.