Fabrication of Unidirectional Coir Fiber Reinforced Nonwoven Melt-Blown Glass Fabric Composite by Compression Molding

The unidirectional composites of Coir Fiber with nonwoven melt blown glass fabric (C-G) were fabricated using compression molding. The reinforcement fibers were chemically treated with NaOH and silane coupling agent and then parallel placed with each other to prepare the unidirectional preforms. The parallel fibers were placed onto the metallic frame and dried before molding. The C-G layers was placed in heated mold for consolidation to produce the unidirectional composite specimens. The heated mold was cooled by the cooling system of the compression machine. Consolidation process involved three stages. At first, under certain temperature, the solid fibrous matrix materials became softened and then the matrix in the liquid form soaked and infiltrated the reinforcing fibers and finally during cooling stage, the matrix turned into solid form to hold the fibers in a definite position. The molding time affected the mechanical properties of the unidirectional composite. The C-G composite were characterized in the term of mechanical properties, dynamic mechanical analysis, and Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy. The optimum compression molding parameters was NaOH treated coir fiber at processing time 8 min having processing temperature 170°C for fabricating unidirectional composite.