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Article history:
Received 14 April 2013
Received in revised form 18 August 2013
Accepted 27 August 2013
Available online 11 September 2013
Keywords:
Natural ber
A. Hybrid composites
B. Mechanical properties
B. Fracture toughness
D. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
a b s t r a c t
This paper studied the mechanical behaviors of unidirectional ax and glass ber reinforced hybrid composites with the aim of investigation on the hybrid effects of the composites made by natural and synthetic bers. The tensile properties of the hybrid composites were improved with the increasing of
glass ber content. A modied model for calculating the tensile strength was given based on the hybrid
effect of tensile failure strain. The stacking sequence was shown to obviously inuence the tensile
strength and tensile failure strain, but not the tensile modulus. The fracture toughness and interlaminar
shear strength of the hybrid composites were even higher than those of glass ber reinforced
composites due to the excellent hybrid performance of the hybrid interface. These macro-scale results
have been cor- related with the twist ax yarn structure, rough surface of ax ber and ber bridging
between ax ber layers and glass ber layers.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In recent years, the usage of natural bers as a replacement for
synthetic bers such as carbon and glass bers in composite materials has gained interest among researchers throughout the world.
Extensive studies on natural bers, such as sisal [1], jute [2,3] and
ax [4,5], showed natural bers has the potential to be an effective
reinforcement for composite materials. The renewed interest of
natural bers over synthetic bers was that they are abundant in
nature and are also renewable raw materials. The usage of natural
bers also provided a healthier working condition than that of
glass bers [6]. Furthermore, natural bers offer good thermal
properties and excellent acoustic performance. These advantages
made natural bers gain applications in automotive, packaging
and construction industries [7]. However, the products made from
natural ber composite were still limited to the non-structure or
sub-structure applications, for example, the interiors of cars due
to their relatively poor mechanical properties [8]. Different approaches have been attempted to increase the mechanical properties of natural ber reinforced composites, such as chemical or
physical modications of the matrix, bers or both of the components. Mohanty et al. [9] found that alkali treatment increased
the bending strength of jute/biopol composites by 30%. Xie et al.
[10] reviewed the inuence of silane coupling agents used for
Mechanics, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai 200092, China. Tel.: +86
021 65985919; fax: +86 021 65983950.
E-mail address: liyan@tongji.edu.cn (Y. Li).
0266-3538/$ - see front matter
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compscitech.2013.08.037
Y. Zhang
Y. Zhang
et al.
et / al.
Composites
/ Composites
Science
Science
andand
Technology
Technology
88 (2013)
88 (2013)
172177
172177
17
Table 1
Mechanical properties of natural bers and glass ber [12,15].
Fibers
Density
3
(g/cm )
Flax
Hemp
Sisal
Jute
E-glass
1.2
1.48
1.33
1.46
2.5
Tensile
strength (MPa)
Youngs
modulus
(GPa)
Elongation
at break (%)
8001500
550900
600700
400800
20003500
6080
70
38
1030
70
1.21.6
1.6
23
1.8
2.5
Designation
Volume
fraction
ratio
(ax/glass)
Ply number
ratio
(ax/glass)
FFRP
100/0
10/0
2G8F
86/14
8/2
4G6F
69/31
6/4
6G4F
50/50
4/6
Stacking sequence
GF
GGFF
Table 2
Hybrid composite laminates with different hybrid ratios.
GGGGFFFF
GFRP ply;
, FFRP ply.
r HT
V m rf V f ef Eg V g ;
V m rg V g ;
crit
crit
8G2F
27/73
2/8
GFRP
0/100
0/10
17
Table 3
Hybrid composites with different stacking sequences.
Designation
Stacking sequence
GFRP ply;
, FFRP ply.
Vg
Vg
17
Y. Zhang
Y. Zhang
et al.
et / al.
Composites
/ Composites
Science
Science
andand
Technology
Technology
88 (2013)
88 (2013)
172177
172177
17
Fig. 2. Tensile stressstrain curves and failure strain of ax/glass ber reinforced
hybrid composites with different hybrid ratios (a) tensile stressstrain curves (b)
tensile failure strain.
eh
ef
eg
2
where ef and eg were the tensile failure strains of the FFRP and
GFRP, respectively.
So the tensile strength of the hybrid composites could be predicted by the modied Eq. (3) based on the hybrid effect of failure
strain and the results were also given in Fig. 1b. A good
consistency between the modied theoretical values and the
experimental data could be observed. Therefore, as long as the
contents of the compo- nent materials were known, the tensile
strength of unidirectional natural ber and synthetic ber
reinforced hybrid composites could be predicted by Eq. (3).
rHT
eh
Eg
Ef
gated. All the hybrid composites had the same total ber volume
fraction and ber volume fractions of ax and glass bers in the
composites were all the same. Therefore, only the stacking sequence would be the matter.
The inuence of stacking sequence on the tensile properties of
the hybrid composites was shown in Table 4. It could be seen
that the tensile modulus for all the hybrid composites were
almost the same. Tensile modulus was obtained from the elastic
stage of the tensile stress strain curve. In this stage, no damages
would occur. The interface did not play a major role for the
elastic modulus. Therefore the stacking sequences showed no
additional inuence on the tensile modulus of the HFRP if the
ber volume fractions of glass ber and ax ber in the
hybrid composites were the same [17].
However, the stacking sequence of the FFRP plies and the GFRP
plies showed bigger inuence on the tensile strength and tensile
failure strains of the hybrid composites. The tensile strength and
failure strain of GF type composite were the highest among the
three types of hybrid composites. More ber layers interaction between ax ber plies and glass ber plies (i.e., more FFRP and
GFRP
Table 4
Tensile properties of ax/glass ber reinforced hybrid composites with different
stacking sequences.
3
Composites
Tensile modulus
(GPa)
Tensile strength
(MPa)
Failure strain
(%)
GF
GGFF
GGGGFFFF
40.1 1.7
40.8 1.4
39.7 0.6
450.1 16.5
412.5 12.7
392.5 20.0
1.09 0.02
0.99 0.04
0.96 0.06
Fig. 3. Fiber bridging between ax ber and glass ber on the tensile specimen of GF type hybrid composite.
Fig. 5. SEM of (a) ax yarn, (b) glass fabric, (c) ax ber and (d) glass ber.
Fig. 7. Failure specimens of (a) GFRP, (b) FFRP and (c) HFRP.
posites had the same total ber volume fraction (67%). The ber
volume fraction of ax ber in the HFRP was 35% and the layup
sequence in the HFRP was one layer glass ber and one layer ax
ber interply hybrid.
Fig. 4 shows the interlaminar shear strength of FFRP, GFRP and
HFRP measured by short beam shear tests. It could be seen that
the HFRP possessed the highest shear strength, compared with
those of GFRP and FFRP. Improvements on interlaminar shear
strength by hybridizing ax and glass
bers signicantly
depended on the ber bridging between glass bers and ax
bers which was mainly caused by the twisted ax yarn structure
and rough surface of ax ber compared to their glass
counterparts, as shown in Fig. 5. The ax yarns were made by
twisting a bundle of short single ax - bers for industry
application requirements as the lengths of most natural bers are
less than 20 mm due to their natural growth characteristics.
Therefore, some ax single bers stretched from the ax yarns
which made the ax yarn structure like a tree full of branches
(Fig. 5a). However, the glass ber yarns showed the
5. Conclusions
The tensile properties of the ax/glass ber reinforced hybrid
composites were improved with the increasing of glass ber
content. It was found that the tensile modulus of the HFRP followed
the ROM very well. And a theoretical model used to predict
the tensile
strength of ax/glass ber reinforced hybrid composites was proposed based on the hybrid effect of tensile failure strain. The
stacking sequence showed great inuence on the tensile strength of
ax/glass ber reinforced hybrid composites, but not on the tensile
modulus if the ber volume in the HFRP were the same. More
different ber interactions or more different phases interfaces led
to higher tensile strength and longer tensile failure strain.
The interlaminar shear strength and the interlaminar fracture
toughness of ax/glass ber reinforced hybrid composites were
higher than those of GFRP. The twist ax yarn structure and the
rough surface of ax bers led to remarkable bers bridging
between ax bers, ax yarn and glass bers, thus improved the
interlaminar properties of HFRP.
Acknowledgement
This project is supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (Grant No. 2010CB631105).
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