Fabrication of Light Weight Farms Yoke With The Use of Composite Material

Abstract

Natural fibers are subdivided based on their origins, coming from plants, animals or minerals. All plant fibers are composed of cellulose while animal fibers consist of proteins (hair, silk, and wool). Plant fibers include bask (or stem or soft sclerenchyma) fibers, leaf or hard fibers, seed, fruit, wood, cereal straw, and other grass fibers. Over the last few years, a number of researchers have been involved in investigating the exploitation of natural fibers as load bearing constituents in composite materials. The use of such materials in composites has increased due to their relative cheapness, ability to recycle and for the fact that they can compete well in terms of strength per weight of material. Natural fibers can be considered as naturally occurring composites consisting mainly of cellulose fibrils embedded in lignin matrix. The cellulose fibrils are aligned along the length of the fiber, which render maximum tensile and flexural strengths, in addition to providing rigidity. The reinforcing efficiency of natural fiber is related to the nature of cellulose and its crystallinity. The existing traditional yoke is made up of the wood of trees like Tun and Haldu which are not easily available in different parts of India. The life of a yoke is about 3 to 5 years, due to this 628 tons of wood is required at every 3-5 years in India that would create a burden to the presently available forests. To overcome these problems, there is a need to develop yoke from waste bio-materials. Keeping this in view, a yoke from composite material was designed and developed and relative comparison between traditional wooden and developed yoke has been done.