Banana fiber reinforced HDPE/PCL (high-density
polyethylene/poly(-caprolactone))
composites have been prepared in the laboratory for the evaluation of mechanical
properties. The tensile strength and Young’s modulus of the HDPE/PCL blend
attains saturation at approximately 20% by weight of PCL addition. Therefore, the
80:20 blend of HDPE/PCL has been selected as the matrix material. It has also been
observed that the ductility of the HDPE/PCL blend drops rapidly by addition of
more than 15% by weight of PCL. Reinforcement of the banana fiber in an 80:20
HDPE/PCL blend matrix shows improvement in ductility, tensile strength and
Young’s modulus. In order to study the dynamic response of this banana fiber
reinforced HDPE/PCL composite plate, a multiquadric radial basis function
(MQRBF) is developed. MQRBF is applied for spatial discretization and a Newmark
implicit scheme is used for temporal discretization. The discretization of the
differential equations generates a greater number of algebraic equations than the
unknown coefficients. To overcome this ill-conditioning, the multiple linear regression
analysis, based on the least square error norm, is employed to obtain the
coefficients. Simple supported and clamped boundary conditions are considered.
Numerical results are compared with those obtained by other analytical
methods.