Evaluation of mechanical properties and surface roughness of cotton-viscose hybrid composite

Natural-fibre reinforced composite material is an emerging material that has great potential to be used in various industrial aspects and applications. The cotton-viscose-reinforced composite is prepared using a compression moulding process. In addition to it, analysis of its mechanical properties was also carried out, such as tensile strength, flexural strength, impact strength and hardness. An attempt was made to process the prepared composite material using abrasive water jet machining (AWJM) under different process parameters (water pressure, nozzle transfer speed and abrasive flow rate) levels to determine the better suitable process conditions to achieve the better surface finish and optimize the machining process. The significance of the optimization process was ensured using the results of the analysis of variance. Morphological analyses of the machined surface were performed using a scanning electron microscope. The surface roughness of 8.28 mu m was found to be the optimized process parameter. Optimum process parameters in AWJM are used to improve the surface quality.