Role of natural fibres: Rubber/polyester composites reinforced with sansevieria cylindrica, waste silk, jute and drumstickvegetable fibres (Moringa oleifera)
Despite thermoset polymers have been widely used as engineering components, adhesives and matrix fibre reinforced composites due to their versatile mechanical properties compared to those of thermoplastics polymer, they virtually brittle and vulnerable to crack.Addition of ductile materials such as rubber microsized natural fibres are added in these polymers would help in gaining tensile and flexural strength, corrosion resistance, toughness and water absorption properties. Aim of this work is to investigate the tensile, flexural and dielectric properties of compositesmade by reinforcing Sansevieria cylindrica as a newnatural fibre into a rubber based polyestermatrix. The fibres were extracted by retting and manual processes have been used to fabricate the composites. These composites were tested for the properties which mentioned above and compared with those of established composites like waste silk, drumstick vegetable fiber and jute made under the ASTM conditions. The compositeswere fabricated up to amaximumvolume fraction of fibre of 0.35 for impact testing, tensile, flexural and dielectric testing. Itwas observed that the tensile properties were increased with respect to volume fraction of fibre for Sansevieria cylindrica fibre composite and are also more than those of silk and drumstick composites and comparable to those of jute composites. The flexural strength of Sansevieria cylindrica fibre composite is more than that of waste silk composite and is closer to drumstick fibre compositewith respect to the volume fraction of fibre,where as the flexuralmodulus is much higher than those of jute, drumstick vegetable fibre composites and also very much closer to silk fibre composites. The dielectric strength of Sansevieria cylindrica fibre composite was increasedwith increase in volume fraction of fibre in the composite unlike the case ofwaste silk, jute and drumstick tree vegetable fibre composites. The dielectric strength being a unique feature of Sansevieria cylindrica fibre composite can be suggested for electrical insulation applications.