0000000000744522
AUTHOR
Birgitha Nyström
Interfacial shear strength of flax fibers in thermoset resins evaluated via tensile tests of UD composites
Abstract A method of interfacial shear strength evaluation, based on the length distribution of fibers pulled out from the tensile fracture surface of an oriented flax-reinforced composite, is applied to composites with vinyl ester and acrylated epoxidized soy oil resin matrices. Two approaches for characterizing the strength of fibers with modified Weibull distribution, fiber fragmentation tests and fiber tension tests, are compared in the analysis of pull-out data. Interfacial shear strength is found to increase by a few percent when loading rate is increased from 1.33% to 8%/min.
Scale effect of the tensile strength of flax-fabric-reinforced polymer composites
The development of UD natural fiber composites, considered for application as structural materials, necessitates evaluation of the scale effect of their strength. Alignment of the fibers in flax bast fiber composites can be achieved by employing textile reinforcement, such as yarns and fabrics. Cutting specimens for mechanical tests out of such textile-reinforced composite plates results in a complex non-uniform reinforcement structure at their edges, which may affect the strength of specimens. Scale effect of the tensile strength in the fiber direction of flax-fabric-reinforced composites is studied in the current work. A model accounting for both volume and edge effect of the specimens o…