Assessing the feasibility of natural composite for structural applications

Blanchard, Jeanne, Sobey, Adam J. and Blake, James I.R. (2016) Assessing the feasibility of natural composite for structural applications. In ECCM 2016 - Proceeding of the 17th European Conference on Composite Materials. European Conference on Composite Materials..

Abstract

Composite materials are widely used for structural applications however, these materials can have an adverse environmental impact. Whilst a number of natural reinforcements show promise as replacements, with comparable specific properties to conventional fibres, there is a perceived high variability due to the inconsistencies at the fibre level and poor volume fractions reduce these properties at the laminate scale. Therefore, a reliability assessment of natural composite materials was performed to investigate the applicability of natural composites to structural applications. The analysis is performed using Monte Carlo simulations, to analyse the reliability and the structural integrity of a composite grillage under out-of-plane loading. At the structural scale, the results show that even if natural fibre reinforced composite cannot compete with conventional fibres structures, they demonstrate some potential for mass constrained applications due to their low density. The paper demonstrates that whilst it is unlikely that these materials will be chosen for primary structures it is a possibility that with improved production techniques, and a reduction of cost with increased up take, that these materials might provide a sustainable alternative in secondary structural applications.

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Contributors

Author: Jeanne Blanchard

Author: Adam J. Sobey

Author: James I.R. Blake

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