Abstract
Natural fibers are gaining much interest in composite materials because of their potential to replace conventional glass fibers. In particular, unidirectional flax fiber composites have shown excellent mechanical properties with different thermoset matrices. However, few data are available when they are made with a biodegradable thermoplastic matrix. This paper compares the mechanical properties of two types of unidirectional flax composites using polylactic acid as the matrix: one made with layers of aligned flax rovings alone and the other containing an additional paper layer fabricated using paper making techniques. The results show that specific tensile properties of the flax/PLA (252MPa·cm3·g−1) and flax-paper/PLA (217MPa·cm3·g−1) composites are similar to those made using woven glass fabrics impregnated with epoxy (227–278MPa·cm3·g−1). Very high impact strength (600J/m) was also obtained for UD flax-paper composites compared to unreinforced resin (15J/m). Together these mechanical properties are promising for industrial applications of this new reinforcement.
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