Evaluation of Mechanical Properties of Sugarcane Reinforced Hybrid Natural Fibre Composites by Conventional Fabrication and Finite Element Method

Natural Fibre composites are being widely used as a replacement to non-bio-degradable polymer composites. The unavailability of proper processes to treat the natural fibres and the errors in fabrication result in less accurate mechanical properties. The accuracy that is obtained by machine-based processes is not possible in Hand layup method, which is employed in fabrication of natural fibre composites. Finite Element method packages which are specially intended in modelling composite structures give more accurate result of properties than experimental setup, by avoiding fabrication errors. This paper evaluates Impact energy and then the tensile strength, flexural strength of a sugarcane fibre GFRP reinforced polymer matrix both by conventional Hand Layup method and also by Finite Element method.