Investigation on Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Stainless Steel Wire Mesh-Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composite

This work cope with the fabrication of hybrid structure composite made of woven glass fibre and Stainless Steel Wire Mesh (SSWM) embedded in Epoxy resin. The hybrid structure composite made using Hand layup method with weight fractions of 50, 52.5, 55, 57.5, 60 wt.% of Woven glass fibre, SSWM uniformly maintained (10 wt.%) in all the laminate except plain Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer(GFRP) (Weight fraction of 60 wt.% Woven glass fibre and 40 wt.% Epoxy resin) composite. In this work, the investigation on effect of SSWM and woven glass fibre in mechanical properties have been characterised, based on tensile, flexural, shear, inter delamination and impact strength. The thermal properties are also analysed using a thermogravimetric instrument that shows better thermal stability. Morphology study is carried out using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The results indicate that the 52.5 wt.% of Woven Glass Fibre with 10 wt.% SSWM and 37.5 wt.% Epoxy has superior properties compared to other combinations. This is evident that the SSWM as a reinforcing agent in the polymer composite.