Effect of S-glass fibre loading on the morphology and hardness properties of epoxy composites

In this research work, the effect of S-glass fibre loading on the hardness properties of epoxy material is studied. The s-glass fibre addition enhanced the hardness property of epoxy composites with preeminent formulations found to be 60:40 wt % epoxy to s-glass fibre composition with hardness value of 93.0 HRA and improvement of 16% when compared to the control sample A. Various percentages of S-glass fibre were use to fabricate S-glass fiber/epoxy composites using hand layout method with open mould. The hardness properties of the composites were characterized using Rockwell harness tester. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to study the distributions of S-glass fibre inside the composites. It was establish that S-glass fibre addition have a good improvement on the hardness property on epoxy material. Furthermore, the more the addition of S-glass fibre into the epoxy, the better the hardness values of the composites until saturation points and after the saturation, the hardness values begins to diminish due to poor interface between the matrix and the reinforcements (s-glass fibre). Please see SEM images for details.