Abstract
Over the last decades, natural fiber-reinforced polymer composites (NFRPs) gained great attention in several engineering fields thanks to the reduction of the environmental impact and the end-of-life cost disposal. Unfortunately, the use of NFRPs is limited, mainly due to their weak resistance against humid environments. Since limited literature is available about the evolution of the dynamic mechanical response of NFRPs under aggressive environments, this paper aims to investigate the damping properties of flax, jute and flax/jute epoxy composites exposed to salt-fog up to 60 days. Furthermore, sodium bicarbonate fiber treatment was performed to improve the composites’ durability. The effectiveness of treatment was evidenced for full flax-reinforced composites, whereas no beneficial effect was found for jute composites. Moreover, treated hybrid laminates having outer laminae reinforced with flax showed better damping behavior than their hybrid counterparts during the whole aging campaign.
Highlights
Among natural fibers, flax [1] and jute [2] are nowadays widely utilized instead of synthetic counterparts such as glass in fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs)
Natural fiber-reinforced composites (NFRPs) have received growing attention in the last decades, both from the academic world and from industries, thanks to their specific mechanical properties, reduced cost and advantages for health and recyclability. This class of innovative materials shows some drawbacks, such as their limited aging resistance in humid or wet environmental conditions, i.e., an extensive literature shows that NFRP materials experienced dramatic degradation of their quasi-static mechanical properties when exposed to these environments [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]
It is widely known that natural fibers show a high tendency to moisture absorption [24,25] due to the hydrophilic nature of their polysaccharide constituents
Summary
Flax [1] and jute [2] are nowadays widely utilized instead of synthetic counterparts such as glass in fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs). Natural fiber-reinforced composites (NFRPs) have received growing attention in the last decades, both from the academic world and from industries, thanks to their specific mechanical properties, reduced cost and advantages for health and recyclability This class of innovative materials shows some drawbacks, such as their limited aging resistance in humid or wet environmental conditions, i.e., an extensive literature shows that NFRP materials experienced dramatic degradation of their quasi-static mechanical properties when exposed to these environments [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. Hemicellulose and the amorphous fraction of cellulose absorb water (due to the high percentage of hydroxyl groups), leading to a decrease of the tensile stability of natural fibers that become more flexible as a result of the plasticization effect [20,26]
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