Abstract:
Polymer composites reinforced with the biofibers are found to have improved applications in many fields and also they can reduce the environmental effect. In this work, caryota – a new natural fiber for polymer composites is fabricated and their tensile, flexural and impact properties are estimated to be used in economical and lightweight load carrying structures. Laminates at different weight fraction (wt%) of 10 wt%, 20 wt%, 25 wt%, 30 wt%, 35 wt%, 40 wt% and 45 wt% are manufactured using a compression molding technique. Results asserted that the unidirectional arrangement having 40 wt% fiber posses good properties. Also the dynamic characteristics such as natural frequency and damping study are carried out for different wt% of unidirectional caryota fiber reinforced composite laminates by ex-perimental modal analysis. From this study, it has been asserted that by using the caryota fiber reinforced polyester composites, the tra-ditional synthetic fiber can be replaced especially in automobile sector. If the caryota fiber reinforced composite material is applied properly, then its application fields will be improved.

Key words: natural fiber, caryota fiber, reinforcements, polymer-matrix composites (PMCs), mechanical properties, vibration analysis