Abstract
Despite the knowledge gained in recent years regarding the use of acoustic emissions (AEs) in ecologically friendly, natural fiber-reinforced composites (including certain composites with bio-sourced matrices), there is still a knowledge gap in the understanding of the difference in damage behavior between green and biocomposites. Thus, this article investigates the behavior of two comparable green and biocomposites with tests that better reflect real-life applications, i.e., load-unloading and creep testing, to determine the evolution of the damage process. Comparing the mechanical results with the AE, it can be concluded that the addition of a coupling agent (CA) markedly reduced the ratio of AE damage to mechanical damage. CA had an extremely beneficial effect on green composites because the Kaiser effect was dominant during cyclic testing. During the creep tests, the use of a CA also avoided the transition to new damaging phases in both composites. The long-term applications of PE green material must be chosen carefully because bio and green composites with similar properties exhibited different damage processes in tests such as cycling and creep that could not be previously understood using only monotonic testing.
Highlights
In “biocomposites”, natural fibers are used as an environmentally friendly alternative to fibers traditionally used in composites
The results were extremely encouraging from an ecological perspective because the results demonstrated that the mechanical properties of the biocomposite were the same regardless of whether virgin or recycled HDPE was used
Studies that investigate these aspects are important to expand the understanding of the degradation of these materials and to enhance the knowledge of their uses, such as in mechanical gears. We investigate these knowledge gaps between comparable bio and green composites made from HDPE for various fiber weights using creep and cyclic tests, which were not performed in previous work [15]
Summary
In “biocomposites”, natural fibers are used as an environmentally friendly alternative to fibers traditionally used in composites. It was revealed that even though the differently sourced composites exhibited similar static mechanical behavior, the internal damage evolution was completely different This was a major breakthrough for analyzing damage modes in comparable bio and green composites, two important aspects of the damage process have not yet been studied. The first of these overlooked aspects is cycling or the effect of a progressive accumulation of deformation during cyclic loadings. We investigate these knowledge gaps between comparable bio and green composites made from HDPE (or in the case of the green composite, NHDPE) for various fiber weights using creep and cyclic tests, which were not performed in previous work [15].
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