Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Mechanical, Thermal and Thermomechanical Properties of Hybrid Glass/Metal Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composites

This work clearly demonstrates the effective utilization of industrial waste metal fiber to replace glass fiber loading for the development of hybrid glass/metal fiber reinforced polymer composites for marine applications. The present composite is fabricated by vacuum assisted resin transfer modelling technique under controlled conditions by varying both glass fiber and metal fiber in a desired percentage weight ratio. The fabricated hybrid composites are characterized by physical (density and void content), mechanical (tensile strength, flexural strength, inter-laminar shear strength and impact strength), thermomechanical analysis (storage modulus, loss modulus and damping factor), water absorption, thermal conductivity and thermo-gravimetric analysis respectively. The second part of this study mainly covers the simulation analysis of both mechanical properties and the thermal conductivity of the hybrid polymer composites. This analysis mainly helps to understand the major causes affecting during experimental analysis along with finding the desired results by comparing them with the experimental results. The last part of this analysis focuses on studying the composite defects during mechanical characterization with the help of scanning electron microscope. Finally, adopted multicriteria decision-making technique to optimize the process parameters by considering all the obtained experimental results to satisfy the proposed application specifically can be used for marine structure development.