Modeling the Buckling Characteristics of Pineapple Leaf Fibre Reinforced Laminated Epoxy Composites

Pineapple leaf is a natural fibre possessing superior mechanical strength which can be used as a reinforcing component in natural fibre-based composites. In general, composites can endure a wide variety of loads while in service. This work reports the buckling analysis of pineapple fibre reinforced epoxy composites and compared it to an isotropic composite reinforced with a synthetic fibre such as E-glass. The effects of changing the fibre volume fraction and plate aspect ratio, on physical buckling behaviour have been reported. The elastic parameters were calculated analytically, whereas the buckling studies were carried out using the finite element method. Buckling was shown to be significantly influenced by the changes in volume fractions, plate aspect ratio, and buckling mode. Additionally, the influence of design parameters such as optimum ply angle for composite stacking-sequence was also investigated under no shear conditions. It was observed that pineapple leaf fibre composites yielded better buckling characteristics than contemporary synthetic E-glass fibre composites.