Introduction to Epoxy/Natural Fiber Composites

Abstract

Although, the epoxy composites reinforced with the synthetic fibers like carbon, glass, and Kevlar fibers had the incredible progress in the last decades, the environmental issues are one of the most important challenges about them. Therefore, replacing the natural fibers with the synthetic fibers in many aspects of engineering is one of the simplest ways for these issues. The natural fibers can be categorized according to their natural sources. Although, these fibers can be extracted from mineral, animal, and plant sources, the natural plant fibers and in some cases animal natural fibers have capability to be used as reinforcement or filler into the epoxy resins. The natural plant fibers can be extracted from the seed, bast, leaf, straw, grass, and fruit. Having the various plant sources has caused that these natural plant fibers have different features, which proper them in many applications. In this chapter, the feature of each plant fiber sources as reinforcement into the epoxy resin, the new ideas and applications of plant fibers/epoxy composites, and capability of these composites were introduced. Also, the animal fibers/epoxy composites were investigated in the separate section.KeywordsEpoxy compositesNatural fibersEco-friendly compositesBio-compositesPlant fibers