Structural and thermal integrity of kevlar fabric – Crumb rubber sandwich polymer composite

Abstract

The global administrations are focusing much on the development of sustainable materials, and that too with the help of industrial waste. The inclusion of wastage not only sustains the green environment but also avails the cost-benefit in disposing of the waste. The present research targets the processing of a novel sandwich Kevlar fibre woven resin-impregnated composite reinforced core with by-products of waste tyres called crumb rubbers. The usual open moulding technique was followed to fabricate the sandwich composite with varying weight percentages of crumb rubber as 0, 5, 10 and 15 (KF-CR-0, 5, 10, 15). The structural and thermal rigidity of the proposed composite was examined through tensile testing and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The tensile test results indicate the exceptional structural rigidity of KF-CR-15 by possessing 68.30 % higher tensile strength than KF-CR-0. The TGA result corroborates a delayed thermal degradation of the sandwich composite with higher crumb rubber loading. Further, the results reveal that 51 % escalated width of thermal degradation is observed for the sandwich composite with a higher loading of crumb rubber than the zero loading. The fracture morphology executed after the tensile test distinguishes the delamination effect and firm bonding to proclaim a clear understanding of the strengthening mechanism.