Experimental and numerical investigation on the mechanical and dynamic performance of flax/E-glass hybrid composites

Abstract

Industry demand for natural fibres has been growing due to social awareness and environmental legislations. For example, the European Waste Framework Directive and the Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Energy have set targets to compel industries towards environmentally friendly materials in various sectors. Along with metals, composite materials are utilized in various applications and the fibres mostly used in these applications are widely E-glass and carbon fibres. Flax fibres have been reported to be one of the most promising natural reinforcements that can be a potential candidate to replace the conventional fibres due to their advantageous specific mechanical properties. These properties of flax fibres are not translated to their composites, however they offer better damping than the conventional fibres. Hybridization of flax fibres with higher strength fibres has been shown to yield materials which balance damping and load carrying capabilities alongside improved environmental credentials. However, little is known about the dynamic behaviour of the hybrids of the most used fibres, namely E-glass, and flax fibres. Moreover, the current literature does not facilitate the prediction of damping properties for these flax/E-glass hybrid composites due to different characteristics of the fibres that govern the energy dissipation mechanisms.

Therefore, an experimental study is necessary to investigate the damping properties of flax/E-glass hybrid composites. This study investigates the tradeoff between the mechanical and the dynamic properties of flax/E-glass laminates manufactured via resin infusion process, which reflects the production of large structural applications.

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Identifiers

ORCID for James Blake: orcid.org/0000-0001-5291-8233

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