Flexural and tensile behavior of Kulkual fiber and TiB2 particles reinforced epoxy composites

Novel composite comprising of Kulkual fibers and Titanium diboride (TiB2) filler reinforced epoxy composites is investigated in the current work. Kulkual also known as Opuntia ficus-indica is a plant abundantly found throughout Ethiopia are utilized in the form fibers in combination with TiB2 as reinforcement to synthesize epoxy matrix composites. Six types of composites including neat epoxy are fabricated using varying content of Kulkual fibers (0, 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10 vol%) and fixed TiB2 content of 5 vol%. The fibers were obtained by drying the leaf-like stem of Kulkual and collecting the skeleton structure found in cladodes. Alkaline treatment of Kulkual fiber to study its physical properties was also investigated. All composites' tensile moduli rise with increasing fiber content and are between 21% and 162% higher than the pure epoxy. All the composites tensile strength increase in the range from 43% to 211% compared to neat epoxy with EK-10 composite revealing the greatest improvement. Flexural properties of all the composites increase with increase in Kulkual fiber content in comparison with neat epoxy. Good bonding of constituents and alkaline treatment of fibers results in enhanced properties of composites. Finally, fractured surfaces are analyzed with scanning electron micrographs to recognize structure property correspondences.