Date of Publication :20th September 2017

Abstract: These days, plastics and synthetic fiber composites are growing remarkably due to their wide range of domestic applications. However, it is more evident that the environment is considerably stressed and damaged due to their non degradable plastic and synthetic essence. In recent years, natural fibre composites have gathered much research attention as reinforcing components owing to their affluent mechanical properties. So far, various natural fibres like sisal, bamboo, banana, flax, kenaf and coir were used as reinforcements and more such natural fibers with outstanding properties can be a considerable breakthrough. One such fibre with proven bio-medical properties is Cordia dichotoma where in this work; its fibers were used as reinforcement to fabricate the composite. Hand-layup technique has been used for preparing the specimens with an increasing fiber weight of 5, 10, 15, and 20 gms respectively. They were cut as per the ASTM standards. Further they were tested for Tensile and flexural strengths using Instran Testing Machine (UTM). They depicted a regular trend of an increase in properties with fiber weight of 20grams.Tensile and flexural tests revealed 23.41MPa and 103.48 Mpa of tensile and flexural strengths respectively. Morphology of tensile and flexural specimens was carried out to observe the interfacial bonding using scanning electron microscope (SEM).

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