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The buriti (Muritia flexuosa) fiber are among the lignocellulosic fibers with apotential to be used as reinforcement of polymer composites. In recent years, the buriti fiber has been characterized for its properties as an engineering natural material. The toughness of buriti composites remains to be a evaluated. Therefore, the present work evaluated the toughness of epoxy composites reinforced with different amounts of buriti fibers by means of Charpy impact tests. It was found a significant increase in the impact resistance with the volume fraction of buriti fibers. Fracture observations by scanning electron microscopy revealed the mechanism responsible for this toughness behavior.

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Environmental considerations in addition to technical, economical and societal benefits are contributing to promote the substitution of natural fibers for glass fiber in polymer matrix composites. However, natural fibers are heterogeneous in their dimensions, specially the cross section diameter, which plays an important role in their physical properties. The fibers extracted from the leaf of the fique plant (Furcraea andina) are a promising stiff natural fiber for composite reinforcement. In this work, a statistical analysis of the density of fique fibers using the Weibull methodology was performed. An attempt to correlate the fiber density with the diameter, precisely measured by means of a profile projector, was carried out. The results revealed an inverse dependence, adjusted to a hyperbolic equation, between the fique fiber diameter and corresponding density.