Effect of red mud on the mechanical properties of banana/polyester composites using design of experiments

This study reveals the potential use of red mud, the industrial waste, as a filler material for making banana fiber reinforced polymer matrix composites. Composites are prepared through hand lay-up and subjected to mechanical testing to find impact, flexural, and tensile strengths. Taguchi design of experiments with L9 orthogonal array is used to optimize the parameter with respect to length, treatment, and weight fraction of fiber and red mud weight percentage. Fiber of different lengths (5, 10, and 15 mm) with different treatments (NaOH and silane), different weight fractions (15, 20, and 25 wt%), and red mud of different weight compositions (5, 10, and 15 wt%) are taken for this study. Scanning electron microscopy study is carried out to observe inference about the fracture behavior of composites and the optimized results are reported.