Variability in the elastic and time-delayed properties of structural hemp fibre composites

Abstract

Various papers in the open source literature have shown that the tensile properties of plant fibres are very scattered. To date, this difference has been viewed as an obstacle to the use of biobased composites in structural applications. However, this question of dispersion has yet not been extensively addressed at the composite scale. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to quantify the distribution of values of the monotonic and time-delayed properties of a woven hemp fabric-reinforced GreenPoxy composite. The variability in these properties is significantly lower than at the fibre scale and on the same order of magnitude as glass fibre composites. This paper also provides the suitable probability distribution laws for these properties, which are important inputs to ensure the optimized and reliable design of plant fibre composite structures.