2017 First International Conference on Recent Advances in Aerospace Engineering (ICRAAE)

Analysis and Fabrication of Polymer Reinforced

Fly-Ash Composites Engine
Ziaullah Sheriff Ilavarasi M Niranjana K
Aeronautical Engineering Stress Engineer Post Graduate
MVJ College of Engineering UTC Aerospace Systems Nehru Institute of Engineering &
Bangalore, India Bangalore, India Technology
zia.aero1220@gmail.com ilavarasimii@gmail.com Coimbatore, India
niranjrnk@gmail.com

Abstract— The main objective of this project is to understand

the mechanical and physical investigation of polymer composite B. Glass Fiber
based on fly ash (Cenosphere). In current research work to In our research work glass fiber is used as a reinforcing
increase the performance of the composites, particulate fillers agent and it is made up of extremely fine fibers of glass with
named Cenosphere are added to the polymer. The process starts silicon oxide and addition of small amount of oxides. This
with characterization and study of fabrication, testing of material kind of fiber is known as Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) or
to determine the behavior of Cenosphere filled glass- epoxy
glass-reinforced plastic (GRP). The drawback of glass fiber is
composites and its parameters. It is observed that by performing
the material with different samples and ratios to evaluate the less strong in shear force across its axis. It can be overcome by
influence of different ratio reveals increase in young’s modulus placing a collection of fibers in preferred direction to avoid
that exhibits good tensile and compressive strength. The buckling caused during compression, and then the material
Cenosphere with the material are analyzed structurally to will be very strong in the direction aligned with fibers.
investigate the reinforcement effectiveness and structural
performance. III. STRENGTHENING
The strength of polymer matrix fiber-reinforced
Keywords— Cenosphere, Polymer composites, Fly ash
composites can be enhanced by using appropriate fillers, the
filler that had been desired for use is Cenosphere.
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Cenosphere
The current aerospace industry/aircraft industry in terms
of commercial and military aircraft was thriving tremendously The coal fired thermal plants discharges fly ash which is
in the development of structural materials of high a by- product of coal gasification during power generation. In
performance. A composites material plays a significant role in this work the Cenosphere is taken from the fly-ash material. A
Aviation field. The constant and continuous search and Cenosphere is a hollow sphere filled with inert air or gas. The
development lead to fiber-reinforced composites. density of Cenosphere is about 0.4 to 0.8 g/cm3 and color
varies from grey to white. The properties of Cenosphere are
Composites can be defined as a combination of two or hard and rigid, lightweight, in noxious, waterproof and
more material that is binded together to form a single material insulative The Cenosphere physical properties are specific
as macroscopic constituent with higher strength, superior gravity of 0.7g/cc, Min particle size of 5 microns, Max particle
physical properties and higher strength to density ratio. size of 540 microns and Mean particle size of 130 microns.
Composites materials are widely used in many industries and
in aviation field the most of the structures used are made up of
composite material due to its light weight and its strength to
weight ratio.
II. MATERIALS

A. Polymer Matrix Composites

Polymer composites are most commonly used composites
for its wide range of application as structural materials. The
primary objective of polymer composites in structural
materials is high specific strength and stiffness applied in
various components and engineering systems.

Fig 1: a. Micro scale of Cenosphere, b. Particle Size

978-1-5090-4983-7/17/$31.00 © 2016 IEEE

 2017 First International Conference on Recent Advances in Aerospace Engineering (ICRAAE)
IV. FABRICATION

Fabrication is the process of building of structures with

layers of fibre and matrix coated, shaping and assembling.
There are two types of moulding in fabrication,

x Open moulding
x Closed moulding

The type of fabrication used here is Hand lay-up

moulding open moulding, which is an open moulding process,
it has been chosen specifically because of its simplest and
most versatile of all composite manufacturing techniques and
requires little capital investment.
A. Fabrication of Test Specimen Fig. 2: The graph between load and displacement of without Cenosphere

Table: 1 ii) Calculation of Young’s modulus & Shear modulus

Selection of Materials (With 5% Cenosphere)
Fibre E-glass
Polymer resin Epoxy The Maximum Load of 75.66 KN, Initial Displacement of
Filler Cenosphere 1.71* 10-2 mm and Maximum Young’s modulus of
26.627*103 N/mm2 is achieved. The stress, strain and ultimate
Fibre to matrix ratio and fibre to volume ratio are taken in tensile stress with % of elongation was calculated.
addition to hardener and the Cenosphere is added in
percentage of 5, 10 and 20. To determine tensile and
compressive strength the ply angle is taken as 00 and 900 in
each layer and cross ply angle of +450/ -450 in each layer.
B. Calculation of Density
The density is calculated in the aid of without Cenosphere
and addition of Cenosphere in terms of percentage ratio 5, 10,
20 in proper proportion by taking volume of the fabricated
model as 240cm3 and mass of the material is determined.
C. Tensile Testing
The tensile test is carried out to determine the material’s
structural efficiency how long it can withstand the load before
the material gets failure during testing. Universal testing
machine (UTM) is used for tensile test. It delivers accurate
Fig. 3: The graph between load and displacement of with 5%
force measuring system and variety of materials can be tested Cenosphere
with hi-tech design. The different type of tests can be carried
out like flexural test, Co-efficient of friction and Compression
test. The Standards used are ASTM D 638, D 882, D 790 and iii) Calculation of Young’s modulus & Shear
D 695, C 1275, ISO R527, BS 2782 and other equivalent modulus (with 10% Cenosphere)
standards.
The Maximum Load of 95.5 KN, Initial Displacement of
i) Calculation of young’s modulus & shear modulus 2.77* 10-2 mm and Maximum Young’s modulus of
(without Cenosphere) 22.238*103 N/mm2 is achieved. The stress, strain and ultimate
tensile stress with % of elongation was calculated.
The material withstands up to a maximum Load of 119.9
KN, Initial Displacement of 2.65* 10-2 mm and Maximum
Young’s modulus of 19.713*103 N/mm2 is achieved. The
stress, strain and ultimate tensile stress with % of elongation
was calculated.
 2017 First International Conference on Recent Advances in Aerospace Engineering (ICRAAE)
Table: 2
Specimen and Applied load
Specimen Load
Without
Cenosphere 280 KN

10% 567 KN
20% 420 KN

The compressive strength for without Cenosphere and the

percentage ratio of 10, 20 ratios is calculated. The maximum
compressive strength of 210 Mpa was achieved.
E. Finite Element Analysis
Finite element method is an integral part of CAE. FEM is
Fig: 4 used to fin approximate solutions by dividing the elements in
The graph between load and displacement of with 10% Cenosphere
terms of discretization and each element are connected by
iv )Calculation of Young’s modulus & Shear nodes. The mesh in FEM can be created with help of mesh
modulus (with 20% Cenosphere) generation tool. There are three steps involved in FEM and it
is discussed.
The Maximum Load of 73.18 KN, Initial Displacement of
1.30* 10-2 mm and Maximum Young’s modulus of A. Pre-Processing
25.281*103 N/mm2 is achieved. The stress, strain and ultimate
tensile stress with % of elongation was calculated Step 1: Creating Mesh
. The mesh adjustment should be done to achieve high
gradient to the material for better meshing. The Un structural
mesh or turbulence model should have much denser near the
wall than the laminar model mesh. Mapped mesh is done for
accurate results and it maintains consistent mesh pattern along
boundaries. A mapped mesh is restricted for element shape
whereas, mapped area mesh contains quad mesh or triangular
mesh elements and mapped volume mesh contains hexahedron
elements. In addition, a mapped mesh typically has a regular
pattern, with obvious rows of elements. This type of mesh,
must build the geometry as a series of fairly regular volumes
and/or areas that can accept a mapped mesh.

Step 2: Boundary Conditions

The boundary conditions can be applied to the domain
either before or after the mesh generation is done. If the
domain is not specified with the boundary condition then the
Fig: 5 default set is achieved by taking a zero gradient normal to the
The graph between load and displacement of with 20% Cenosphere surface. The change in boundary conditions is not preferably
allowed because the entire analysis must be restarted unless
D. Compression testing the change is applied to solution.
A compression test is essentially the opposite of the more
common tension test. Purpose of Compression Tests: The goal Step 3: Results
of a compression test is to determine the behaviour or The result file of Ansys is stored in separate file in the
response of a material while it experiences a compressive load name of jobname.rst file. Result file is found on the file
by measuring fundamental variables, such as, strain, stress, storage which we have selected at the starting of the solution
and deformation. and it will not save automatically into software database. The
The Testing Apparatus used in this project is Compression program software is enabled to store every step of iteration
Testing Machine (Electrically cum Hand Operated-Three and if any changes need to be done the results can be fetched
Gauges) CTM-3G. in results file and it can be altered.
 2017 First International Conference on Recent Advances in Aerospace Engineering (ICRAAE)

Fig: 6
Displacement of The Material Without Cenosphere Fig: 9
Stress of the Material 5% Cenosphere

Fig: 7 Fig: 10
Stress of the Material without Cenosphere Displacement of the material 10% Cenosphere

Fig: 8 Fig: 11
Displacement of the Material 5% Cenosphere Stress Of The Material 10% Cenosphere
 2017 First International Conference on Recent Advances in Aerospace Engineering (ICRAAE)
that the density got reduced to such smaller value of 1400
kg/m3 than the parent one with 1433 kg/m3.

Fig: 14
The Graph between Density and Cenosphere

Fig: 12 C. Young’s Modulus

Displacement of the material 20% Cenosphere In this work, the filler material Cenosphere giving an
encouraging results in terms of mechanical properties when
adding with the glass fiber-reinforced epoxy resin. The
material tensile strength with 5% weight gives 17.194Gpa and
with 20% gives 16.762Gpa respectively.

Fig: 13
Stress of the material 20% Cenosphere Fig 15: The Graph between Young’s Modulus and Cenosphere

D. Shear Modulus
V. COMPOSITE CHARACTERIZATION Similarly, the shear modulus also increased in 5% and
20% with values of 6.685GPa and 6.704GPa respectively
A. Introduction while the parent one is with 4.755GPa.
The present investigation includes physical and
mechanical characterization of the polymer matrix composites.
The epoxy resin filled with different percentage of Cenosphere
with the fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP). The details of
fabrication process, testing of these materials are discussed in
previous section. Here, the comparative results of various
parameters are reported.
B. Density
The properties of a composites are determined by density
of the material depends on the relative proportion of matrix
and reinforcing materials. It can be seen that the density
increases with increase in Cenosphere content till 10%. After
Fig. 16: The Graph between Shear Modulus and Cenosphere
 2017 First International Conference on Recent Advances in Aerospace Engineering (ICRAAE)
The possible reason for this increase in strength could be only modulus of Epoxy Glass Fibre with and without Cenosphere is
due to the interaction between the particulate and matrix. This around 12- 17GPa. It is a Brittle material. While comparing
shows that there is strong bonding between the resin and filler. the result with other standard metal like Magnesium, which
has Young’s modulus of 41- 45GPa, it is less than what we
E. Ultimate Tensile Strength
require. The density of this material is around 1400- 1520
Though the young‘s modulus, and shear modulus shows Kg/m3, which is far more less than any of the metal and less
promising result over the filler content, the ultimate tensile than the Brittle material like glass. Finally comparing the
strength exhibit contrary result. The Ultimate tensile strength compressive strength (140 – 280MPa) of various materials,
of parent specimen is 450MPa while 5%, 10% and 20% shows this material‘s strength is so high than many materials known.
only 510MPa, 413MPa and 341MPa respectively.
Therefore based on the above discussion it can be seen that
this material can be replaced in the area where the need for
ultimate strength is maximum and the young’s modulus is
around the obtain results.

VI. CONCLUSION
Therefore, the current work is concluded as the industrial
wastage fly ash can be turned into industrial wealth which
saves more space by storing such industrial wastes. The fly
ash with 5 % (Cenosphere) by weight is proving a better
performance in terms of strength and density when compared
to without Cenosphere, 10%, 20% (Cenosphere). The young’s
modulus of pure epoxy gets increases with fly ash.

Most importantly the Ultimate Tensile Strength of Cenosphere

Fig: 17 reinforced epoxy glass fiber with 5% has increased more than
The Graph between Cenosphere and U.T.S
many metals and any of the brittle material. The compressive
F. Compressive Strength strength showed improved strength than the parent material
The compressive test of specimen with fillers showed about twice the vale with addition of Cenosphere fillers at
better strength than the specimen without fillers. The strength 10%.
is so high that it is twice the value of latter one. REFERENCES

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