Tensile and Flexural Behaviour of Basalt Composites with Silicon Carbide Fillers

The requisite in need of biopolymer materials in the automotive, aerospace, biomedical, sports and construction domains driven the present research attempt. The research aims to fabricate a novel natural composite with improved properties by dispersing silicon carbide as a micro filler. The basalt fiber epoxy composite is fabricated by hand layup method at a different weight percentage of silicon carbide, namely 0, 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10%. The developed basalt fiber epoxy composite’s mechanical behaviour was characterized through hardness, tensile and flexural tests. The maximum hardness of 92.4 HV 0.3 is obtained for the composite with 10 wt.% silicon carbide. The density and percentage of water absorption are increased with an increase in silicon carbide fillers’ dispersion. The dispersion of silicon carbide fillers on the basalt fiber epoxy composite resulted in the enhancement of tensile strength to 221.3 MPa, i.e., 25.74% rise in tensile strength for composite with 7.5 wt.% silicon carbide filler. The dispersion of silicon carbide fillers on the basalt fiber epoxy composite showed a reduction in flexural strength. Further, the fractography analysis of the fractured samples displayed the dominant failure mechanisms. Delamination shows a more significant contribution to the reduction of flexural strength of the developed composite.