Evaluation of mechanical properties of polypropylene fibre reinforced epoxy composite filled with silicon carbide particulates

Abstract Composites are the most widely used engineering materials. Composites find more applications due to their special properties compared to others materials. In this work, polypropylene fibre reinforced epoxy composite filled with silicon carbide particulates were investigated to improve the mechanical properties of material with different compositions. The composites were prepared by vacuum bag moulding technique under high pressure with varying concentrations of fibre, matrix and silicon carbide particulates (filler material). The mechanical properties like tensile strength, percentage of elongation, flexural strength and hardness were evaluated and analysed by comparing with the different compositions. The results showed that, better mechanical behaviours were found in the composite specimen with 50% fibre and 40% of epoxy filled with 10% of filler material. The microstructure and surface morphology analysis was carried out on Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM).