One of the most relevant properties of composite materials to be considered is stiffness. Fiberglass has been used traditionally as a fibrous reinforcing element when stiff materials are required. However, natural fibers are been exploited as replacements for synthetic fibers to satisfy environmental concerns. Among the different natural fibers, wood fibers show the combination of relatively hi...

Introduction: Natural materials are more efficient and attractive than synthetic materials. In this study, the sound absorption behavior by natural kenaf composite and Micro-Perforated Panel (MPP) at low and medium frequency region was investigated. Material and Methods: Initially, the results of kenaf fibers with a thickness of 10 mm were validated by the Finite Element Method (FEM) based on ...

Most natural and man-made fibers have circular cross-sections; thus the properties of materials composed of non-circular fibers are largely unexplored. We demonstrate the technology for fabricating fibers with predetermined cross-sectional shape. Passive hydrodynamic focusing and UV polymerization of a shaped acrylate stream produced metre-long fibers for structural and mechanical characterizat...

Synchrotron FTIR (S-FTIR) microspectroscopy was used to monitor the silk protein conformation in a range of single natural silk fibers (domestic and wild silkworm and spider dragline silk). With the selection of suitable aperture size, we obtained high-resolution S-FTIR spectra capable of semiquantitative analysis of protein secondary structures. For the first time, we have determined from S-FT...

Textile materials made from natural fibers have played an important role in the life of human beings from time immemorial and still are widely used in the modern textiles industry for their unique properties as high quality tex tile materials. Due to the variation in staple length, the natural fibers with short staple length can’t be used to spin yarns. Consequently, natural fibers such as wool...

Environmental awareness today motivates the researchers, worldwide on the studies of natural fiber reinforced polymer composite and cost effective option to synthetic fiber reinforced composites. The availability of natural fibers and ease of manufacturing have tempted researchers to try locally available inexpensive fibers and to study their feasibility of reinforcement purposes and to what ex...

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...

Natural fibers can be attractive reinforcing materials in thermosetting polymers due to their low density and high specific mechanical properties. Although the research effort in this area has grown substantially over the last 20 years, manufacturing technologies to make use of short natural fibers in high volume fraction composites; are still limited. Natural fibers, after retting and preproce...

Natural Fibers composites are considered to have potential use as reinforcing material in polymer matrix composites because of their good strength, stiffness, low cost, environmental friendly and biodegradable. In present study, mechanical properties for natural fiber composites were evaluated. Here, areca fiber is used as new natural fiber reinforcement and epoxy resin as matrix. The extracted...