Dynamic mechanical characteristics of jute fiber and 304 wire mesh reinforced epoxy composite

Adding different reinforcements to the polymer composite is gaining more importance in the manufacturing industries because of their variation in mechanical properties. To satisfy modern industrial requirements, the mono-fiber polymer composites are substituted by hybrid composites in civil and automotive applications. The present work is to develop and investigate the hybrid composite behavior reinforced with AISI 304 (500 µm) wire mesh and jute fiber with epoxy LY556 resin. To analyze the mechanical properties of hybrid composites, two different orientations (45° and 90°) of wire mesh are selected and stacked with jute fiber by hand lay-up method. The wire mesh composite or hybrid composite is subjected to mechanical characterization like tensile, flexural, impact, and interlaminar. Subsequently, the viscoelastic behavior of the wire mesh composite is observed in terms of storage modulus (E′), loss modulus (E″), and damping factor (tan δ) by the dynamic mechanical analyzer (DMS 6100). The fractured surface microstructure of the wire mesh composite is analyzed by scanning electron microscope. The 45° oriented wire mesh composite sample shows better mechanical properties in ultimate tensile strength (20.55 MPa), flexural strength (0.145 kN), percentage of elongation (2.83%), and interlaminar strength (0.120 kN). At the transition region, the peak energy absorption of 0.622 is observed in the 90° oriented wire mesh composite sample at 0.5 Hz frequency.