Effect of Short Fiber Reinforcement on Mechanical Properties of Hybrid Phenolic Composites

Fiber plays an important role in determining the hardness, strength, and dynamic mechanical properties of composite material. In the present work, enhancement of viscoelastic behaviour of hybrid phenolic composites has been synergistically investigated. Five different phenolic composites, namely, C1, C2, C3, C4, and C5, were fabricated by varying the weight percentage of basalt and aramid fiber, namely, 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5% by compensating with barium sulphate (BaSO4) to keep the combined reinforcement concentration at 25 wt%. Hardness was measured to examine the resistance of composites to indentation. The hardness of phenolic composites increased from 72.2 to 85.2 with increase in basalt fiber loading. Composite C1 (25 wt% fiber) is 1.2 times harder than composite C5. Compression test was conducted to find out compressive strength of phenolic composites and compressive strength increased with increase in fiber content. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) was carried out to assess the temperature dependence mechanical properties in terms of storage modulus ( ), loss modulus ( ), and damping factor (tan δ). The results indicate great improvement of values and decrease in damping behaviour of composite upon fiber addition. Further X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis were employed to characterize the friction composites.