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American Society for Testing and Materials

Natural fibers are getting attention from researchers and academician to utilize in polymer composites due to their ecofriendly nature and sustainability. The aim of this review article is to provide a comprehensive review of the foremost appropriate as well as widely used natural fiber reinforced polymer composites (NFPCs) and their applications. In addition, it presents summary of various surface treatments applied to natural fibers and their effect on NFPCs properties. The properties of NFPCs vary with fiber type and fiber source as well as fiber structure. The effects of various chemical treatments on the mechanical and thermal properties of natural fibers reinforcements thermosetting and thermoplastics composites were studied. A number of drawbacks of NFPCs like higher water absorption, inferior fire resistance, and lower mechanical properties limited its applications. Impacts of chemical treatment on the water absorption, tribology, viscoelastic behavior, relaxation behavior, energy absorption flames retardancy, and biodegradability properties of NFPCs were also highlighted. The applications of NFPCs in automobile and construction industry and other applications are demonstrated. It concluded that chemical treatment of the natural fiber improved adhesion between the fiber surface and the polymer matrix which ultimately enhanced physicomechanical and thermochemical properties of the NFPCs.

/pdf/a-review-on-natural-fiber-reinforced-polymer-composite-and-24eoqfvi7o.pdf

A Review on Natural Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composite and Its Applications

Characterization and Properties of Natural Fiber Polymer Composites: A Comprehensive Review

Functionalization is an important way to breed new properties and applications for a material. This review presents an overview of the progresses in functionalized hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanomaterials. It begins with an introduction of h-BN structural features, physical and chemical properties, followed by an emphasis on the developments of BN functionalization strategies and its emerging properties/applications, and ends with the research perspectives. Different functionalization methods, including physical and chemical routes, are comprehensively described toward fabrication of various BN derivatives, hetero- and porous structures, etc. Novel properties of functionalized BN materials, such as high water solubility, excellent biocompatibility, tunable surface affinities, good processibility, adjustable band gaps, etc., have guaranteed wide applications in biomedical, electronic, composite, environmental and "green" energy-related fields.

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Functionalized hexagonal boron nitride nanomaterials: emerging properties and applications.

Synthetic structural materials with exceptional mechanical performance suffer from either large weight and adverse environmental impact (for example, steels and alloys) or complex manufacturing processes and thus high cost (for example, polymer-based and biomimetic composites) Natural wood is a low-cost and abundant material and has been used for millennia as a structural material for building and furniture construction However, the mechanical performance of natural wood (its strength and toughness) is unsatisfactory for many advanced engineering structures and applications Pre-treatment with steam, heat, ammonia or cold rolling followed by densification has led to the enhanced mechanical performance of natural wood However, the existing methods result in incomplete densification and lack dimensional stability, particularly in response to humid environments, and wood treated in these ways can expand and weaken Here we report a simple and effective strategy to transform bulk natural wood directly into a high-performance structural material with a more than tenfold increase in strength, toughness and ballistic resistance and with greater dimensional stability Our two-step process involves the partial removal of lignin and hemicellulose from the natural wood via a boiling process in an aqueous mixture of NaOH and Na2SO3 followed by hot-pressing, leading to the total collapse of cell walls and the complete densification of the natural wood with highly aligned cellulose nanofibres This strategy is shown to be universally effective for various species of wood Our processed wood has a specific strength higher than that of most structural metals and alloys, making it a low-cost, high-performance, lightweight alternative

https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2018/fpl_2018_song001.pdf

Processing bulk natural wood into a high-performance structural material

This paper is a review on the tensile properties of natural fiber reinforced polymer composites. Natural fibers have recently become attractive to researchers, engineers and scientists as an alternative reinforcement for fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites. Due to their low cost, fairly good mechanical properties, high specific strength, non-abrasive, eco-friendly and bio-degradability characteristics, they are exploited as a replacement for the conventional fiber, such as glass, aramid and carbon. The tensile properties of natural fiber reinforce polymers (both thermoplastics and thermosets) are mainly influenced by the interfacial adhesion between the matrix and the fibers. Several chemical modifications are employed to improve the interfacial matrix–fiber bonding resulting in the enhancement of tensile properties of the composites. In general, the tensile strengths of the natural fiber reinforced polymer composites increase with fiber content, up to a maximum or optimum value, the value will then drop. However, the Young’s modulus of the natural fiber reinforced polymer composites increase with increasing fiber loading. Khoathane et al. [1] found that the tensile strength and Young’s modulus of composites reinforced with bleached hemp fibers increased incredibly with increasing fiber loading. Mathematical modelling was also mentioned. It was discovered that the rule of mixture (ROM) predicted and experimental tensile strength of different natural fibers reinforced HDPE composites were very close to each other. Halpin–Tsai equation was found to be the most effective equation in predicting the Young’s modulus of composites containing different types of natural fibers.

/pdf/a-review-on-the-tensile-properties-of-natural-fiber-3xbaelcyi2.pdf

A review on the tensile properties of natural fiber reinforced polymer composites

A commercial phenol formaldehyde based resole thermosetting resin supplied by Borden Chemical Australia Pty. was reinforced with ceramic-based fillers (SLG) to increase its fracture toughness. This is the second study of the same series. By testing fracture toughness and viscosity at a range of filler addition levels, the optimal addition of SLG was determined in terms of workability, cost and performance. The composites obtained were post-cured in conventional oven as in the previous study. The original contributions of this paper include lowering the cost of the composite (35% w/t of SLG) by 50 % but at the same time its the fracture toughness was reduced only by 20 % (compared to the neat resin), and increasing the fire resistance of the resins tremendously. It was also found that the values of fracture toughness of the samples in this study were higher than those obtained in the previous study when the percentage by weight of SLG varies from 0 to 35%. The shapes of the plots of fracture toughness against percentage by weight of SLG were also different. The possible reasons for the differences were explained.

/pdf/fracture-toughness-of-phenol-formaldehyde-composites-ms2jcnu8y0.pdf

Fracture Toughness of Phenol Formaldehyde Composites Reinforced with E-spheres

A commercial phenol formaldehyde based resole thermosetting resin supplied by Borden Chemical Australia Pty. was filled with ceramic-based fillers (Envirospheres “SLG”) to increase its fracture toughness. By testing fracture toughness at a range of filler addition levels, the optimal addition level of SLG was able to be determined in terms of workability, cost and performance. The composites obtained were post-cured in conventional oven and in microwaves respectively. It was found that the fracture toughness of the microwave cured composites were up to 37 % higher than those cured in conventional oven when the percentage by weight of SLG varies from 0 to 35%. The time required for post-curing was also reduced from 10 hours (in conventional oven) to 40 minutes (in microwaves).

Fracture Toughness of Phenol Formaldehyde Composites Post-Cured in Microwaves

The fracture toughness of SLG filled phenolic composites have been determined by short bar tests. It is expensive to prepare the samples for the tests. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a mathematical model that will predict the fracture toughness of particulate filled phenolic composites. Mathematical models for tensile strength, Young’s modulus are available but not for impact strength and fracture toughness. There is no sign that it can be built up from simple mathematical model; polynomial interpolation using Lagrange’s method was therefore employed to generate the fracture toughness model using the data obtained from experiments. From experiments, it was found that the trend of the fracture toughness of the samples cured conventionally was similar to that cured in microwaves; it is therefore possible to predict the fracture toughness of the samples cured in microwaves from shifting the mathematical model generated for fracture toughness of samples post-cured in conventional oven. The shifted model represented the fracture toughness of the samples cured in microwaves vey well.

/pdf/mathematical-modeling-of-the-fracture-toughness-of-phenol-2piyycga2s.pdf

N. Pattarachaiyakoop

Papers

A review on the tensile properties of natural fiber reinforced polymer composites

Fracture Toughness of Phenol Formaldehyde Composites Reinforced with E-spheres

Fracture Toughness of Phenol Formaldehyde Composites Post-Cured in Microwaves

Mathematical Modeling of the Fracture Toughness of Phenol Formaldehyde Composites Reinforced with E-Spheres