Study on Physical and Thermal Characteristic of Natural Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composites

Abstract

In the present work, thermal conductivity of pine wood dust (150µm mesh size) filled epoxy composites have been studied experimentally & empirically. The thermal conductivity values of PWD filled epoxy composites were calculated experimentally using guarded heat flow meter method in accordance with ASTME-1530 standard. The effects of density and filler content on the thermal conductivity of composite products were investigated and found that thermal conductivity values increases in a linear manner with density and decreases in non-linear manner with filler (PWD) content. An empirical investigation for describing thermal conductivity of PWD filled epoxy composite was compared with the experimental results and has a good agreement with it. It was also compared with other empirical equations for predicting thermal conductivity values of wood and found that thermal conductivity values obtained from empirical investigation consistently has lower values than other empirical equations. It is found that the composite density values calculated theoretically are not equal to the experimentally measured values. This difference is a measure of voids and pores present in the composites. It is also found that with the increase in filler (PWD) content from 0 vol% to 35.9 vol%, the theoretical as well as measured densities decreases by about 22%.