Silicon https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-018-9801-8 ORIGINAL PAPER Investigation on Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Stainless Steel Wire Mesh-Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composite M. Sakthivel 1 · S. Vijayakumar 2 · B. Vijaya Ramnath 3 Received: 13 April 2016 / Accepted: 7 March 2018 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract This work cope with the fabrication of hybrid structure composite made of woven glass fibre and Stainless Steel Wire Mesh (SSWM) embedded in Epoxy resin. The hybrid structure composite made using Hand layup method with weight fractions of 50, 52.5, 55, 57.5, 60 wt.% of Woven glass fibre, SSWM uniformly maintained (10 wt.%) in all the laminate except plain Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer(GFRP) (Weight fraction of 60 wt.% Woven glass fibre and 40 wt.% Epoxy resin) composite. In this work, the investigation on effect of SSWM and woven glass fibre in mechanical properties have been characterised, based on tensile, flexural, shear, inter delamination and impact strength. The thermal properties are also analysed using a thermogravimetric instrument that shows better thermal stability. Morphology study is carried out using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The results indicate that the 52.5 wt.% of Woven Glass Fibre with 10 wt.% SSWM and 37.5 wt.% Epoxy has superior properties compared to other combinations. This is evident that the SSWM as a reinforcing agent in the polymer composite. Keywords Glass fibre reinforced polymer · Stainless steel wire mesh · Mechanical properties · Thermal property · Morphology study 1 Introduction A fibre of high strength and modulus reinforced in a polymer matrix is Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRPs). In these FRPs, the fibre and matrix retain their chemical and physical prop- erties (Agarwal & Broutman, [1]). In general, the matrix acts as a load transfer medium and fibres are the load-bearing members which are placed in proper location and orien- tation in the matrix and it protects environment damages (Friedrich et al., [7]). The development and application of FRPs have been tremendous growth because of low density, good strength and high performance with clean process- ing (Lancaster, [16]). They are used in the manufacturing  M. Sakthivel metalsakthi@gmail.com 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, T. John Institute of Technology, Bangalore 560083, Karnataka, India 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College of Engineering, Kanchipuram 631552, Tamil Nadu, India 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sri Sairam Engineering College, West Tambaram, Chennai 600 044, India of turbine blade, pressure vessels, clutches, wheels, cams, gears, car bonnets, computer cases and cylinder shell (Lu et al., [17]). They are also frequently used in automobile, aerospace and marine fields due to their high strength and stiffness (Cui et al., [5]). Glass, Carbon, graphite and aramid are the most common fibres used for the reinforcement in polymer matrix composites (Soutis, [26]). The weave of carbon fibre strongly influences the erosion resistance of carbon fibre reinforced polyetherimide composites (Bijwe et al., [3]). The erosion resistance of plain weave composite was slightly better than satin weave composite (Rattan & Bijwe, [20]). The good chemical resistance and simplicity of utilisation on the site were the two most charming properties over other strengthening materials (Grace et al., [8]). The ultimate flexural strength was significant in beams with lower steel reinforcement ratio (Saadatmanesh & Ehsani, [22]). Nonetheless, the extensive reduction in the ductility of FRPs reinforced RC structures is still the real detriment of utilising FRP material in structural applications (Ritchie et al., [21]). The loss of ductility is attributed to the linear stress–strain behaviour of FRP materials to failure (Attari et al. [2]). Attempts to conquer the ductility issue