Natural fibres: can they replace glass in fibre reinforced plastics?
By P. Wambua, J. Ivens, I. Verpoest. 2001
2,467 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In this work, natural fibres (sisal, kenaf, hemp, jute and coir) reinforced polypropylene composites were processed by compression moulding using a film stacking method. The mechanical properties of the different natural fibre composites were tested and compared. A further comparison was made with the corresponding properties of glass mat reinforced polypropylene composites from the open literature. Kenaf, hemp and sisal composites showed comparable tensile strength and modulus results but in impact properties hemp appears to out-perform kenaf. The tensile modulus, impact strength and the ultimate tensile stress of kenaf reinforced polypropylene composites were found to increase with increasing fibre weight fraction. Coir fibre composites displayed the lowest mechanical properties, but their impact strength was higher than that of jute and kenaf composites. In most cases the specific properties of the natural fibre composites were found to compare favourably with those of glass.
Subfields: Mechanical Engineering, Polymers and Plastics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ce18aace33ad8c1697b8a308109ef78efcaa0b92
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In Mechanical Engineering
In Polymers and Plastics
Citations in the corpus
- Morphological aspects and mechanical properties of single bamboo fibers and flexural characterization of bamboo/ epoxy composites (2011, background): “These new composites are emerging as a realistic alternative to glass-reinforced composites in some applications.(11) Nevertheless, there are some obstacles that have to be overcome, such as their moisture sensitivity, the necessity of low temperature processing, and thermal degradation of the fiber”
- KENAF FIBRES AS REINFORCEMENT FOR POLYMERIC COMPOSITES: A REVIEW (2009, background): “In their quest to answer questions on this burning issue of natural fibre composites, (Wambua et al. 2003) evaluated several different natural fiber–polypropylene composites to determine if they had the ability to replace glass fiber– reinforced materials.”
- Industrial Hemp Fibers: An Overview (2019, background): “[47] tested and compared the mechanical properties of sisal, kenaf, hemp, jute, coir fibers, and glass fiber-reinforced polypropylene composites.”