Published Paper Details:

Natural fibres are light, sustainable and high in performance, leading to a rapid growth in the development of natural fibre-based hybrid composites for use in structural engineering applications. In this research, five different fibre stacking sequence hybrid banana-basalt reinforced epoxy laminates were manufactured and the mechanical behaviour of them were investigated experimentally. The laminates were produced using the hand lay-up process and the vacuum bagging process to provide uniform impregnation of resin, enhanced wetting of the fibres and reduced void content. Mechanical property tests were performed using tensile, flexural and impact tests according to the corresponding ASTM standards. The results of the experiments showed that the fibre stacking sequence is an important factor in the mechanical performance of the hybrid laminates. The mechanical performance was greatest for configurations in which the basalt fibre layers were placed on the external surfaces due to their high stiffness, greater load bearing capacity and good stress transfer. Maximum laminate properties were obtained to be ultimate tensile strength of about 185 MPa, flexural strength of 265 MPa, and impact strength of 72 kJ/m2, whereas the minimum laminate properties obtained were 145 MPa, 205 MPa, and 52 kJ/m2 respectively. The improvements are about 28% in tensile strength, 29% in flexural strength and 38% in impact strength. The optimized laminate showed a decrease of fibre pull-out and improved fibre-matrix adhesion, resulting in better load transfer and delayed crack propagation. The outcomes showed that the banana-basalt hybrid composites possess excellent combination of the environmentally friendly natural fibres and the superior mechanical properties of basalt fibres, which make them useful candidates for lightweight applications in automobile, aerospace and general engineering industries.