Abstract

Material science has been a booming field of mechanical engineering. The search for advanced composites has led\nto the discovery of new composites. Composites are made from two or more constituent materials having different physical\nand chemical properties, which when blended together exhibit a totally different properties than their individual properties.\nThis has helped us to develop innumerable composites with desired properties because the mechanical properties of\ncomposites is due to the combined effects of matrix, reinforcement, hardener and solvents (if any) used. This paper highlights\nthe experimental investigation on effect of fly ash concentration on ultimate tensile strength and cross breaking strength of fly\nash/nano clay reinforced epoxy composite. Investigation was performed by varying the concentration of fly ash (by weight\npercent) keeping the concentration of nano clay constant in the epoxy matrix. The hardener used was HY951 which is\nhydrophilic in nature. The particles of nano clay being in the order of nanoscale adds to the enhancement of mechanical\nproperties. It was observed that the mechanical properties enhanced for higher concentration of fly ash while decreased for\nlower concentration, keeping pure epoxy composite as the reference. Further characterization of the polymer composite was\ndone by studying the morphological characteristics using the SEM, FT-IR, XRD reports.