ABSTRACT
Wong et al. [1] have studied ‘Fracture characterisation of short bamboo bre reinforced polyester composites’ in 2010. In the study, fracture behaviour of short bamboo bre-reinforced polyester composites is investigated. The matrix is reinforced with bres ranging from 10 to 50, 30 to 50 and 30 to 60 vol.% at increments of 10 vol.% for bamboo bres at 4, 7 and 10 mm lengths, respectively. The results reveal that at 4 mm bre length, the increment in bre content deteriorates the fracture toughness. As for 7 and 10 mm bre lengths, positive effect of bre reinforcement is observed. The optimum bre content is found to be at 40 vol.% for 7 mm bre and 50 vol.% for 10 mm bre length. The highest fracture toughness is achieved at 10 mm/50 vol.% bre-reinforced composite, with 340% of improvement compared to neat polyester. Fractured surfaces investigated through the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) describing different failure mechanisms are also reported. Tensile strength (TS) is improved only at 10 mm bre length. Highest TS with improvement of 25% compared to neat polyester is achieved for 10 mm/40 vol.% composite. Young’s modulus is deteriorated by bre reinforcement except at 10 mm/40 vol.% of reinforcement. Fracture toughness of all types of composites is higher compared to neat polyester. Maximum increment of 340% is achieved at 10 mm/50 vol.% of bre reinforcement. The toughening mechanisms involved are crack-tip blunting, crack deection and crack pinning, which lead to energy dissipation through matrix plastic deformation, bre debonding, bre pullout and bre damage. LEFM approach is applied with notable success.
