The application of thermoplastic polymers as a matrix material in fibre reinforced composites has grown steadily over the last decades [1]. Thermoplastic composites offer clear advantages over their thermoset counterparts in terms of improved fracture toughness, potential for recycling and, most notably, the possibility to reshape the product at higher temperatures [1,2]. The latter allows rapi...

Discontinuous fibre composites represent a class of materials that are strong, lightweight and have remarkable fracture toughness. These advantages partially explain the abundance and variety of discontinuous fibre composites that have evolved in the natural world. Many natural structures out-perform the conventional synthetic counterparts due, in part, to the more elaborate reinforcement archi...

This paper describes an investigation of the influences of chlorine dioxide treatment on fibre surface lignin. The fibre surface characteristics and the interfacial behaviour of the sisal fibre/phenolic resin composites were also studied by SEM, AFM, and XPS. The results show that the surface of the untreated fibre contains a large amount of lignin with granular structure and non-granular struc...

Amorphous micro-steel (AMS) fibre made by cooling of liquid pig iron is flexible, light and durable to corrosion, then to be compatible with high flowable and disperable states of mixing as well as high ductile post-cracked performances to apply in fibre-reinforced cementitious composites. In the current research, AMS fibre-reinforced cementitious composites based on cement and alkali-activated...

In this work, the underlying micro-damage mechanisms of randomly oriented short fibre-reinforced composites were revealed based on real internal microstructural characteristics obtained by high-resolution (0.7 μm/pixel) synchrotron radiation X-ray computed tomography (SR-CT). The special 'pore dominant micro-damage processes' were directly observed through SR-CT three-dimensional reconstructed ...

Increasing concern about global warming and depleting petroleum reserves have made scientists to focus more on the use of natural fibres such as bagasse, coir, sisal, jute etc. This has resulted in creation of more awareness about the use of natural fibres based materials mainly composites. In past decade there has been many efforts to develop composites to replace the petroleum and other non d...

This paper presents the results of an initial investigation into the potential for monitoring water absorption and chemical degradation in epoxy matrix composites using evanescent wave spectroscopy. While conventional silica glasses have too low a refractive index and too short an IR transmission window to be useful as unclad sensing elements in most resin systems, chalcogenide glasses offer su...

In this investigation, studies are carried out on the mechanical properties of hybrid polymer composites. Hybrid composites can reach a better combination of both artificial and natural fibre properties. Different weight percentages of jute fibres were hybridised with coconut sheath to produce the composites through compression moulding. Composites were produced using untreated and treated fibr...