Evaluation of Mechanical Properties of Kevlar Fibre Epoxy Composites: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Kevlar fiber reinforced polymer composites are rapidly growing in manufacturing applications such bicycle tires and racing sails to body armor, bullet proof vests, military helmets, walking boots etc. Kevlar epoxy composite material using the Kevlar fiber and epoxy resin LY-556 was fabricated with manual hand layup procedure. The mechanical characteristics like tensile, impact strength and flexural rigidity were evaluated. With the results obtained it is found that kevlar epoxy composite provides better mechanical characteristics than aluminum. In this work, the possibility of replacing aluminum with Kevlar reinforced epoxy composite material is investigated for various applications viz. manufacturing of bus body frame, bullet proof vests, automobile body, sports applications, fire proof clothing, military helmets etc. Also, the FE analysis is carried out with MIDAS NFX software to correlate the test results with FEA.