Evaluating the Structural Integrity of Fibreglass for the Manufacture of Headgears

A composite material is made up of two phases, the matrix, and the reinforcing materials. The reinforcing material is embedded over matrix material. The reinforcing material works to make the matrix material harder. A fibreglass reinforced composite was developed using E-glass fibre reinforcement and epoxy resin matrix. The composites were produced using the hand lay-up technique with varying fibre percentage of 9%, 13% and 25% by weight percentage of fibreglass mat at orientations of 0°, 15°, 45°, and 90° chosen at random. A 13% by weight percentage of chopped mat was also developed for purpose of comparison. The fabricated composites were subjected to tensile test, flexural test, impact test, punch shear test and hardness test to ascertain the appropriate fibre contents and orientation that is optimum for the manufacture of headgears. Analysis of Variance was carried out to determine level of significance and percentage contribution of the parameters. The results show that both fibre orientation and percentage of fibre content reinforcement of have significant influence on the strength and fracture energy of the composite .The fibre orientation has a higher impact on the strength of the composite (79.74%) while the percentage of fibre reinforcement has a lesser impact on the tensile strength of the composite (20.26%). However, the fibre orientation has a lesser impact on the fracture energy of the composite (24.54%) while the percentage of fibre reinforcement has a higher impact on the fracture energy of the composite (75.46%) The result from this study shows that the increase in fibre content increases flexural strength and impact toughness of the fibreglass reinforced composite. A fibre orientation of 90° and fibre reinforcement of 25% wt. was determined to be optimally suitable for the manufacture of headgears.