Abstract
Composites with reinforcements based on bast fibers such as flax, hemp and kenaf offer many advantages such as weight reduction, improved specific impact, flexural, acoustic properties, and balanced performance to cost that can be achieved by properly designing the material composition. Their position is well established, especially in the nonstructural automotive applications. However, in structural applications of composites, their mechanical property profile is not comparable to the dominant reinforcements such as glass and carbon fibers. The low mechanical properties of these composites could be improved by hybridization that involves adding high-performance fibers to the bast fiber composites that could improve the low mechanical performance of the bast fiber composites. The review presented in this article provides an overview of the developments in the field of hybrid polymer composites composed of bio-based bast fibers with glass, carbon, and basalt fibers. The focus areas are the composite manufacturing methods, the influence of hybridization on the mechanical properties, and the applications of hybrid composites.
Highlights
The use of natural fiber reinforced polymer composites especially in the automotive industry is established and well documented [1,2,3,4]
The dynamic mechanical analysis showed that the hybrid composites with untreated fibers exhibited higher storage, loss, and damping moduli compared to the composites with treated fibers
They observed that the fiber treatment resulted in poor dynamic mechanical properties and concluded that it could be because of factors such as low aspect ratio, random distribution of the fibers and incompatibility between carbon and kenaf fibers that led to the phase separation of fiber and matrix and affected the mechanical performance of the composites
Summary
The use of natural fiber reinforced polymer composites especially in the automotive industry is established and well documented [1,2,3,4] This is because of the unique properties of natural fibers—such as low density, high specific strength and stiffness, non-abrasive to the equipment during processing, abundant availability, renewability, sustainability, and environmental friendliness [5,6]. Ecological, and economic benefits, they have certain drawbacks such as non-uniform and non-reproducible properties due to soil and weather conditions, and the way they are extracted Characteristics such as higher flammability, limited mechanical properties, incompatibility with hydrophobic polymer matrices, thermal degradation at high processing temperatures, and poor resistance to moisture are challenges [3,7,8]. The following sections present a short introduction of the hybrid composites, the factors affecting hybridization, a literature review, and an overview of the applications of hybrid composites
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