Polymer-based composites have been drawing the attention of the research community for many decades, not only in academia but also in industry. However, continuously increasing environmental concerns have led the researchers to focus on natural composite materials. This is a challenge for researchers to develop a natural composite without compromising the composites’ excellent mechanical properties and tribological performance. In this research, coir and sugarcane are selected as the natural fillers, and epoxy resin has been chosen for matrix material. To look into the crystallinity of composites, XRD analysis was done. In addition, a mechanical study was done to look at the manufactured composites’ tensile and flexural characteristics. The tribological performance (i.e., wear rate and friction coefficient) of the composite samples is investigated by using a pin-on-disc setup. The parameters such as filler loading and normal load affecting the tribological performance of epoxy-based natural composites are studied. The results show that the wear and friction characteristics of the composite reinforced with sugarcane and coir were 10.78% and 57.80% lower than those of the neat composite, respectively.

The vibration and damping characteristics of the laminated composite cylindrical sandwich shell with carbon nanotube reinforced magnetorheological elastomer (CNT-MRE) core is presented in this article. Higher order shear deformation theory (HSDT) based on finite element (FE) formulation is employed to derive the governing equations of motion of the laminated composite cylindrical CNT-MRE sandwich shell. The present HSDT model of the cylindrical CNT-MRE sandwich shell is validated with the ABAQUS model in terms of natural frequencies on cantilever boundary condition. The influence of CNT reinforcement in the MRE layer of the cylindrical sandwich shell is also studied through the structural rigidity. The detailed parametric investigations are performed to study the influence of magnetic field intensities, thickness ratio, radius of curvature and ply orientation on the stiffness and damping behavior of composite cylindrical CNT-MRE sandwich shell.

The present article investigates the dynamic characteristics of jute fiber-reinforced sandwich composite panels with periodic cores. The sandwich panel contains the jute fibers-reinforced polymer (JFRP) composites as face layers and the silicone rubber as the core layer. The tensile and flexural properties of JFRP composite material were examined using ASTM D3039 and ASTM D7264 standards. The finite element model was developed to obtain the dynamic properties of the composite sandwich panel with conventional and periodic cores. Furthermore, the influence of end condition, core to face layer thickness ratio, and face layer to core thickness ratio on the dynamic properties of the sandwich panels are presented. The numerical results indicate that the periodic core composite sandwich panel greatly influences the structural stiffness compared with a conventional composite sandwich panel.