Sarah and I are working in Professor Gupta’s Composite Materials lab, which focuses on designing and testing a wide range of composite materials such as syntactic foams, alloys, and natural compositions. Composites are new materials created when two or more materials are combined to maximize their strengths while minimizing their weaknesses. Our project is to create and test a natural composite consisting of hemp fibers, epoxy, and TETA (a hardener) to create a new low-cost building material which is both sturdy and light weight. Such technology is especially beneficial to low wage countries.

To create our composites, we cut the hemp fibers to 5mm pieces, mixed them with epoxy and TETA, and then cast them in 152 mm X 13 mm X 40 mm molds. From there the samples were allowed to set for 6- 12 hours at room temperature followed by 2 hours at 160° F. 1%, 5%, and 10% samples were created.

Finally, the samples were polished and cut to prep them for tension testing.