Abstract
Due to rigorous new environmental legislations, automotive, marine, aerospace, and construction sectors have redirected their focus into using more recyclable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly lightweight materials driven by strengthening resource efficiency drive. In this study, the influence of moisture absorption on flax and flax/glass hybrid laminates is presented with the aim to investigating their low velocity impact behaviour. Three different types of composite laminates namely, flax fibre reinforced vinyl ester, flax fibre hybridised glass fibre and glass fibre reinforced vinyl ester composites were fabricated using resin infusion technique. The moisture immersion tests were undertaken by immersing the different specimens in sea water bath at room temperature and 70 °C at different time durations. The low velocity falling weight impact testing was performed at 25 Joules of incident energy level and impact damage behaviour was evaluated at both ageing conditions using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray microcomputed tomography (micro CT). The percentage of moisture uptake was decreased for flax vinyl ester specimens with glass fibre hybridisation. The maximum percentage of weight gain for flax fibre, flax/glass hybrid and glass fibre reinforced composites immersed at room temperature for 696 h is recorded at 3.97%, 1.93%, and 0.431%, respectively. The hybrid composite exhibited higher load and energy when compared flax/vinyl ester composite without hybridisation, indicating the hybrid system as a valid strategy towards achieving improved structural performance of natural fibre composites. The moisture absorption behaviour of these composites at room was observed to follow Fickian behaviour.
Highlights
The ever-increasing demand for lower CO2 emission has driven intensive research into sustainable lightweight materials in transport sector including marine, automotive and aerospace applications [1,2,3].Composite materials have progressed from traditional fibre composite materials, reinforced with synthetic fibres, such as glass or carbon fibres, to natural fibre composite materials
The reported work in this study focuses on the development of lightweight flax/glass hybrid composites, investigating their moisture absorption behaviour at different temperatures and correlating the moisture absorption on the low velocity falling weight impact performance of flax and flax/glass hybrid vinyl ester biobased composites potential for transport applications
1) that1)both initial rate ofrate water and flax/glass hybrid composites. It is evident the results (Figure thatthe both the initial of absorption and the maximum water uptake is highest for flax (F6) specimens followed by flax/glass hybrid specimens (GF4G) and lowest for glass fibre vinyl ester composite (G6)
Summary
The ever-increasing demand for lower CO2 emission has driven intensive research into sustainable lightweight materials in transport sector including marine, automotive and aerospace applications [1,2,3]. Some natural fibres allow mechanical reinforcements for impact, tensile and flexural properties, such as flax or hemp These are stiff and lighter reinforcements (density 1.5 g/cm3 ) compared to glass fibres (density 2.5 g/cm3 ), having a better strength to weight ratio to glass fibres. Natural fibre reinforced composites with high strength and stiffness, together possessing acceptable mechanical properties closer to conventional glass fibre composites, are of great importance in terms of developing lightweight and environmentally sustainable composite materials for structural applications. There are not many reported works on the influence of flax/glass fibre hybridisation on the moisture absorption behaviour at different temperatures and their effects on the mechanical properties of natural fibre composites. Moisture uptake and the diffusion coefficient results calculated using percentage
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