Thermal and Mechanical Properties of Bamboo Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composites

Abstract

Bamboo fibers demonstrate enormous potential as the reinforcement phase in composite materials. In this study, in order to find suitable NaOH concentration for bamboo fiber treatment, bamboo fibers were treated with 2 wt.%, 6 wt.% and 10 wt.% NaOH solutions for 12 h, respectively. We determined that 6 wt.% NaOH treated bamboo fibers were optimal for the fabrication of bamboo fiber composites by single fiber tensile test, single fiber pull-out test, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The short length bamboo fibers treated with 6 wt.% NaOH solutions were well dispersed in the epoxy matrix by a new preparation method. The effect of fiber content and fiber length on the mechanical behavior of bamboo fiber reinforced epoxy composites was investigated. The results confirmed that fracture toughness and flexural modulus of the composites monotonically increased with fiber length and content. However, for all samples, composites showed negligible difference on the flexural strength. The fracture surfaces of the composites were observed by SEM, revealing that fiber breakage, matrix cracking, debonding, and fiber pull out were major failure types. In addition, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was carried out to investigate the thermal behavior of both bamboo fibers and composites.

Surface treatment of eucalyptus wood for improved HDPE composites properties

“…To overcome the problem of phase's compatibility, the lignocellulosic fillers are usually chemically modified to improve the interface's compatibility thus enhancing adhesion. For example, Kai Zhang et al . produced epoxy composites reinforced with bamboo fibers and concluded that the use of unmodified fibers resulted in poor interfacial adhesion between fibers and epoxy resin matrix, mainly due to the hydrophilic moieties on the surface of the fibers.…”

Effect of Alkaline Treatment on Structural Characterisation, Thermal Degradation and Water Absorption Ability of Coir Fibre Polymer Composites

“…Due to the hydrophilic nature of natural fibres and hydrophobic nature of polymer matrices, low compatibility between the fibre-matrix leads to poor wettability of the natural fibres to the polymer matrices. Poor interfacial adhesion between the natural fibres and polymer matrices degrades the mechanical properties and the moisture resistance of the composites, thus limits the further application of natural fibre composites (Akhtar et al 2016;Punyamurthy et al 2017;Qian et al 2015;Zhang et al 2018).…”

“…% NaOH solution at room temperature for 24 and 48 h was performed on coir fibres. Epoxy resin was used as the polymer matrix as it has excellent mechanical properties, chemical resistance and electrical insulation (Zhang et al 2018). The structural properties (SEM and FTIR analyses), thermal degradation and water absorption ability of the coir fibres composites was further investigated.…”

Low velocity impact, compression after impact and morphological studies on flax fiber reinforced with basalt powder filled composites

“…The peak of the curve clearly defines that more amount of energy is absorbed and it doesn't allow the impactor to penetrate inside the composite. The presence of filler basalt powder provides additional strength to the flax fiber in the time of application of impact force about of 1755 N. The improved interfacial bonding between the basalt powder and the polyester resin will exhibits this kind of responses in the time of sudden load applications [27]. In figure C severe damages were noted for the composite C and the peak of the curve clearly indicates that the composite does not absorb the application of load.…”