Abstract
Glass and carbon fiber-reinforced composite materials have been applied for the high demand in industrial use to date, because their advantages are light weight, high strength, and corrosion resistance. However, the disposal problem after the use of these materials has also surfaced as a serious environmental problem. As a measure to solve this problem, many researchers have tried to investigate the potential of plant-based natural fibers instead of artificial fibers. When we use natural fibers as a long fiber-reinforcement, the negative point is irregular fiber waviness inherent in a sliver form. This is because such fiber waviness often decreases the mechanical properties. The purpose of this study is thus to clarify the relation between irregular fiber waviness and the composite’s tensile strength. The clarification was performed from two points of view: One is quantification of irregular fiber waviness, based on spatial analysis such as Local Moran’s I and Geary’s c. Result shows that quantified parameters were correlated well with tensile strengths of sliver-based natural fiber composites. Another is a 3-D finite element analysis in which the fiber waviness was treated as an orthotropic body. Finally, the relation of the tensile strengths with maximum stress and Tsai-Hill criterions was discussed.
Highlights
To date, fiber-reinforced composite materials have been used in many industries such as automotive and aerospace, because their advantages are high strength and low specific gravity
The results show that tensile strengths of DM specimens accompanied with the fiber waviness are lower than those of SLM
It should be noted that the fiber volume fraction of DM specimens are lower in whole than that of SLM. This is attributed to the fact that the fibers cannot be packed compactly, as compared to SLM specimens, because of irregular fiber waviness
Summary
Fiber-reinforced composite materials have been used in many industries such as automotive and aerospace, because their advantages are high strength and low specific gravity. Carbon and glass fibers are typical reinforcements of the composite materials. Several recycle techniques have been developed for used glass fiber composites [3, 4], scientists and engineers have tried to use plant-based natural fibers such as flax, kenaf, curaua, and ramie, which are environmentally friendly materials as an alternative [5–9]. Ren et al [16, 17] used Pearson’s type of one- and two-dimensional autocorrelation to analyze the randomness in fiber waviness of a curaua- and flax sliverreinforced composite, respectively. This method does not necessarily classify local size and intensity in irregular fiber waviness, which has the tendency to give risky areas on specimen
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