Experimental and Numerical Determination of Natural Frequency of Woven Basalt Fibre–Vinyl Ester-Reinforced Composite Plates

Control parts of an automobile undergo relentless vibration during its motion; to counteract this behaviour of the control parts, it is recommended to select composite materials in the manufacturing process over other available types of materials because of its various advantages. In this scenario, natural fibres, viz. sisal, basalt, etc., could be utilized in manufacturing certain control parts of an automobile as these are biodegradable, economical and light in weight. In this study, woven basalt fibre–vinyl ester-reinforced composite plates are prepared to investigate the free vibration characteristics where basalt fibre is considered as a reinforcement and vinyl ester as a matrix (BFRP). These composite plates are prepared by compression moulding technique with different basalt fibre compositions of 60, 50 and 45%. The natural frequencies and mode shapes for these prepared laminates were determined using impact hammer test maintaining an aspect ratio of 0.83. The measurements were found by fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based spectrum analyser and it was observed that the natural frequency of the laminate increased with the rise in laminate thickness. The frequencies obtained with respect to mode shapes from ANSYS were in par with the experimental values.