Dynamic mechanical behavior of natural fibers reinforced polymer matrix composites – A review

Abstract

The environmental awareness and rapid development in the area of material science attracted the researchers into natural based materials on account of their chemical resistance, ease of fabrication, low density, specific strength, inexpensiveness and favourable mechanical properties. However, some cellulose fibres extracted from natural sources have somewhat high mechanical properties nearer to those of synthetic fibres. Composites using natural fibres as reinforcement have shown favourable results. These natural fiber reinforced composites often considered as high performance reinforcements in polymer composites. DMA had become important for both industry and academia. DMA is an effective thermal analysis tool for the determination of elastic nature of a composite material with respect to of time, frequency, temperature and combination of these. A dynamic mechanical analysis utilizes applied force and deformation data to evaluate the stiffness changes in a material under varied temperatures. DMA measures elastic nature with reference to storage modulus (E’), loss modulus (E”), damping factor (Tan delta) and glass transition temperature (Tg). These properties will be very helpful to measure the performance characteristics of polymer composite materials including both thermosets and thermoplastics. Now a days, most effective and flexible DMA instruments under different modes are available. Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) is currently used by rubber manufacturers to study the performance of their materials. For the purposes of industrial testing as well as for research and development, DMA is recognized as a highly informative characterisation technique. DMA curves depicts variation of dynamic moduli and damping in glassy or rubbery regions. The current review studies the effect of natural fibres on dynamic mechanical properties of polymer composites. Many results exhibited that inclusion of natural fibres with polymers tends to increase the elastic nature of the polymer matrix.