FABRICATION AND STUDY OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF CARBON FIBER COMPOSITE MATERIAL

Now a day in automobile industry these polymeric composites are widely used due to its properties of light weight and popular styling. Carbon fibre also used in automobile body parts (doors, interior designing, front and rear bumpers etc.) chassis and shock absorber, drive shaft and many other. Here carbon fiber composite is reinforced with epoxy and polyester resins; which are randomly arranged using hand laying method. Each sample is manufactured with ten layers of carbon fiber. Tensile properties, Impact strength (Charpy/ Izod test), Hardness variation and elongation properties were determined for different specimens with 3K-6K and 12K carbon fiber composites. These three are composed with epoxy and polyester resin. Max tensile strength obtained 265 MPa in 12K Epoxy sample. In tensile test polyester has less strength than epoxy. The maximum Impact strength in Charpy 6.95 KJ/m2 was measured in 3K epoxy and in Izod Impact test max strength measured 7.3 KJ/m2 in 3K epoxy and polyester equally. The maximum hardness obtained 73.83 HRB in 3K epoxy. Here epoxy has more hardness than polyester composites. The maximum elongation measured 30% in 3K epoxy moreover 6K also has 28% elongation. Like above results polyester has less elongation properties than epoxy .