Natural fibers have been used to reinforce materials for many years. More currently they have been employed in combination with plastics. Many types of natural fibers have been investigated for use in plastics including flax, hemp, jute, cotton and banana. Natural fibers have the advantage that they are renewable resources and have marketing appeal. These agricultural wastes can be used to prep...

The remarkable mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes, such as high elastic modulus and tensile strength, make them the most ideal and promising reinforcements in substantially enhancing the mechanical properties of resulting polymer/carbon nanotube composites. It is acknowledged that the mechanical properties of the composites are significantly influenced by interfacial interactions between...

The development of shape-memory polymer composites (SMPCs) enables high recovery stress levels as well as novel functions such as electrical conductivity, magnetism, and biofunctionality. In this review chapter the substantial enhancement in mechanical properties of shape-memory polymers (SMPs) by incorporating small amounts of stiff fillers will be highlighted exemplarily for clay and polyhedr...

Figure2 While there are limitless applications for these materials, we are interested in radiation shielding and radiation resistant materials for use in the space industry. Initially, we focused on optically transparent single wall nanotoube (SWNT) polymer composites (2-5). Three different in situ polymerization/sonication methods, heat, light and gamma radiation, were used to produce poly (me...

The current breed of natural-fiber based polymer composites, because of their biobased and possibly biodegradable nature, offer an alternative as a ‘green’ material available for automotive and other engineering applications. However such composites suffer from the drawback of low strength and fatigue properties compared to the carbonor glass-fiber based polymer composites. Cellulose nanofibers...

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites possess many advantages for aircraft structures over conventional aluminum alloys: light weight, higher strengthand stiffness-to-weight ratio, and low life-cycle maintenance costs. However, the relatively low thermal and electrical conductivities of CFRP composites are deficient in providing structural safety under certain operational conditions...

One of the most important physical factors related to the thermal conductivity of composites filled with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) is the dimensions of the GNPs, that is, their lateral size and thickness. In this study, we reveal the relationship between the thermal conductivity of polymer composites and the realistic size of GNP fillers within the polymer composites (measured using three-d...

Calcium phosphate (CaP)/polymer composites have been studied as an alternative graft material for the treatment of bone defects. In this study, lysine-triisocyanate-based polyurethane (PUR) composites were synthesized from both hydroxyapatite (HA) and β-tricalcium phosphate (TCP) to reduce the brittleness of CaP and increase the bioactivity of the polymer. The mechanical properties and in vitro...

The microscopic interfacial structures for a series of metal-organic framework/polymer composites consisting of the Zr-based UiO-66 coupled with different polymers are systematically explored by applying a computational methodology that integrates density functional theory calculations and force field-based molecular dynamics simulations. These predictions are correlated with experimental findi...

Mineralized polymer composites (MPC) are recognized as potential fillers of bone defects. Though bioceramics exhibits quite a good bone-bonding and vascularization, it is considered to be too stiff and brittle for using alone. Thus, the use of polymer scaffold instead of bioceramics has several advantages including combining the osteoconductivity and bonebonding potential of the inorganic phase...