Water immersion aging of polymer composites: architectural change of reinforcement, mechanical, and morphological analysis

In this work, three main kinds of natural fibers (jute, bamboo, and flax) were reinforced with epoxy as a matrix to develop natural fiber–reinforced polymer composites (NFRP) with varying architectures (plain, twill, basket). All the composites were created using the hand-layup approach. The primary focus of this research is to find out the physical properties (density and water absorption) and mechanical properties (tensile, flexural, impact, hardness, surface roughness) along with XRD (X-ray diffraction) of the developed composites. SEM (scan electron microscopy) was used to analyze the functionality between both the fiber as well as the matrix. As an outcome, the flax composite having basket architecture shows the maximum density (1.17 g/cm 3 ), and the flax composite having twill architecture gives the minimum density (0.93 g/cm 3 ) as compared with another composite. The behavior of flax composite having basket structure is hydrophobic, while the behavior of jute composite having twill structure shows the hydrophilic nature when the water absorption test was done. The tensile strength is maximum (91.83, 42.33, and 46.33 MPa) for jute, bamboo, and flax composite having twill architecture and minimum (81.91, 24.07, and 46.58 MPa) in the case of plain architecture for all composites. The flexural strength is minimum (60.69, 9.53, and 12.25 MPa) for jute, bamboo, and flax composite having plain architecture and maximum (212.25 and 45.57 MPa) in the case of basket architecture for jute and bamboo composite and 39.69 MPa for twill architecture of flax composite. The impact strength is maximum only in the case of jute composite, while hardness value in the case of bamboo composite shows the closest value in all three architectures. The surface roughness values are the same in the case of flax composite having plain and basket architecture.