Page 68 - Template Tesis UTM v2.0

The influence of VIP parameters of carbon fibre reinforced cyclic butylene

terephthalate on the impact properties were investigated. Through-out the process,
pressure was fixed at 0.27 bar and three parameters were closely monitored which

were resin temperature, mould temperature (inside) and cooling rate [78]. Quasi-static
samples of CSM glass/polyester were fabricated using VIP and were left for one day

at ambient temperature after complete impregnation [81]. A comparative study was
done between hand lay-up and VIP processes in fabricating kenaf/polyester. It was

found that the infusion specimen exhibited higher tensile strength compared to hand

lay-up specimen [72]. VIP was used to fabricate carbon fibre with sandwich foam to
experimentally investigate on the impact loading with different stacking sequences of

fibres. During processing, pressure was set at 0.1 MPa and cured at 60 °C for 6h [82].
Pandita et al. [34] used resin infusion under flexible tooling (RFFT) process to

fabricate jute/glass hybrid composites to investigate on the impact resistance, water
resistance and LCA of the specimens. During the process, vacuum pressure was

applied at 0.8 bar and epoxy resin was infused to impregnate the whole laminate.

2.11 Tensile Properties of Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composites

The purpose of tensile test is to measure the quantity of the lateral contraction

of the specimen in response to the applied tensile stress with the intention of tensile
fracture that occurred in the gauge length region. There are many factors which have

affected the tensile properties of the hybrid and pure composites. According to Jawaid

et al. [21] some of them are fibre strength and modulus, type of filler used, orientation
and length of fibre and bonding condition between fibre and matrix.

Atiqah et al. [83] studied on the kenaf/glass toughened unsaturated polyester
resin with the volume faction ratio between fibres and matrix is 30/70. Glass reinforced

polyester exhibited the highest tensile strength in comparison with treated and

untreated kenaf/glass hybrid laminates. However, combination between glass and
treated kenaf with equal volume fraction of 15/15 exhibited the highest tensile

modulus, which was superior to pure glass laminates as illustrated in Figure 2.16.

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