Abstract
Natural fibers have attracted great attention from industrial players and researchers for the exploitation of polymer composites because of their “greener” nature and contribution to sustainable practice. Various industries have shifted toward sustainable technology in order to improve the balance between the environment and social and economic concerns. This manuscript aims to provide a brief review of the development of the foremost natural fiber-reinforced polymer composite (NFRPC) product designs and their applications. The first part of the manuscript presents a summary of the background of various natural fibers and their composites in the context of engineering applications. The behaviors of NFPCs vary with fiber type, source, and structure. Several drawbacks of NFPCs, e.g., higher water absorption rate, inferior fire resistance, and lower mechanical properties, have limited their applications. This has necessitated the development of good practice in systematic engineering design in order to attain optimized NRPC products. Product design and manufacturing engineering need to move in a mutually considerate manner in order to produce successful natural fiber-based composite material products. The design process involves concept design, material selection, and finally, the manufacturing of the design. Numerous products have been commercialized using natural fibers, e.g., sports equipment, musical instruments, and electronic products. In the end, this review provides a guideline for the product design process based on natural fibers, which subsequently leads to a sustainable design.
Highlights
A new product begins with an idea and ends with the physical production of the product
Product designers can use natural fiber composite materials in design proposals in order for the design to be promoted as an eco-design
When considering the selection of proposals, product design specifications sign specifications (PDS) are very useful because they serve as evaluation parameters in (PDS)
Summary
A new product begins with an idea and ends with the physical production of the product. Product designers will determine the formal qualities of products manufactured by industry by focusing on aptness in function, use, ease of production, materials, cost, and the number of constituent parts. They concentrate on user experience—the interaction between users and products, types of meanings products evoke, and what sorts of emotions the products elicit [17]. Marzuki [27] reported that designers need three things, namely, material, machinery, and method of manufacturing This means that designers do have to produce quality designs, but they are responsible for proposing and determining the appropriate materials so that the product can be produced at an affordable cost. Design concepts and materials can be combined in a computer system, namely, computer-aided drawing (CAD) and finite element analysis (FEA)
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