Free vibration characteristics of jute fibre reinforced composite for the determination of material properties: Numerical and experimental studies

Jute fibre reinforced polymer composite (JFRPC) is one of the natural fibre composites that have recently become attractive used in automobile, aerospace, buildings and other industrial applications due to their lightweight, less cost, biodegradability and easy to fabricate. It becomes necessary to know the material properties and dynamic characteristics of natural fibre reinforced composites to use them effectively for engineering applications. This paper presents numerical and experimental studies of dynamic characteristics of jute fibre reinforced polymer composites for the estimation the material properties. Finite element method (FEM) and impulse excitation technique (IET) were used to determine the natural frequency value of a plate JFRPC. The result shows that the natural frequency is significant and applicable for mechanical properties identification especially modulus of elasticity (E), modulus of rigidity (G) and Poisson ratio (µ) of a jute fibre reinforced polymer plate. This technique is expected to predict the mechanical properties of other materials and prospective as non-destructive evaluation approaches.