International Journal of Engineering and Technology

Several billion tons of fillers and reinforcements are used annually in the plastics industry, and there is a huge potential market for recyclable, energy efficient and more environmentally friendly composite materials. The use of medium strength and low strength fiber available in nature are having enough potential for other application where high strength are not critical but it can provide a feasible range of alternative materials to suitable conventional material. The systematic experimental study using developed mould-punch set up and testing aids was carried out for the effect of volume fraction of reinforcement on longitudinal elastic modulus of unidirectional cotton fiber reinforced polyester composites. The testing was carried out as per ASTM D3039/D3039M-08. The micro mechanics assessment of obtained experimental results with models available in literature for longitudinal elastic modulus forms an equally important constituent of present work.